HOWARDS END (Criterion/E1, 1992) D: James Ivory, w/ Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins. Rating: NNNNN DVD package: NNN Rating: NNNNN
For the producing/directing team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory and the genre they popularized with A Room With A View, the handsomely mounted period piece taken from a respected literary novel, Howards End is the absolute pinnacle.
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Its visuals are so rich, you can virtually feel the fabric. The acting is so nuanced and the characters given such a range of emotions that they become fully rounded in a way few movie characters do.
Henry J. Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) is a classic Victorian capitalist. His friends the Schlegel sisters (Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter) are modern Edwardian London intellectuals, complete with social conscience. They’d like to enlist his help in assisting luckless working-class clerk Leonard Bast (Samuel West). Things go wrong, though not in the ways you’d expect.
EXTRAS Retrospective making-of and design docs, Ivory reminiscences of Merchant doc, Merchant/Ivory history doc, essay booklet, more. Widescreen. English audio and subtitles.
