Howard's End (Blu-ray)

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Criterion set up a voting mechanism for the first time in April, 2009, through the Amazon.com Web site asking its fans to vote for a future Blu-ray release. Five titles were up for the vote: Louis Malle´s "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (1987) , Jim Jarmusch´s "Down by Law" (1986), James Ivory´s "Howards End" (1992), Masaki Kobayashi´s "Kwaidan" (1964), and Peter Weir´s "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975). As a fan of Peter Weir´s works, I voted for "Picnic at Hanging Rock." So when "Howard´s End" was selected as the final choice, I was crushed. I thought "Picnic at Hanging Rock" was in need of a proper restoration and it not getting selected meant there was no special-edition release in the foreseeable future. To me, "Howard´s End" was an odd final choice, nevertheless….

I was introduced to the world of Merchant-Ivory films when I saw "Shakespeare Wallah" (1965), "The Guru" (1969), and "Bombay Talkie" (1970). One can conclude that their filmmaking career is divided into two parts. The first part started in early 1961 and involved movies for which original screenplays were specifically written. The latter part started after 1981, and it focused on creating films adapted from literary sources. More so, the second half of their filmmaking years focused mainly on social commentaries about the class structure and social attitudes in Britain.

Tightly based on the 1910 E.M. Forster book by the same name, "Howard´s End" is a story that touches on three families in different classes: The Wilcoxes, Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife, Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave), are rich capitalists; the Schlegels sisters, Margaret (Emma Thompson) and Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), are educated and progressive upper-middle-class London socialites who are doing well but are not as rich as the Wilcoxes; and the Basts are struggling to make ends meet and are part of the lower economic class of London. The story begins with Helen being rejected by Wilcox´s eldest son, Paul. As the story unfolds, the Wilcoxes move to London and take up residence in the immediate neighborhood where Margaret and Helen live.

Margaret becomes friends with Henry´s wife, Ruth, who is terminally ill. Soon after, Ruth invites Margaret to see her house at Howard´s End and thus gets introduced to Henry. Meanwhile, Helen inadvertently takes an umbrella belonging to Leonard Bast (Samuel West). This sets off a chain of events by which the Basts get connected to the Schlegels sisters and the Wilcoxes. Henry recommends that Leonard quit his job as a clerk in the insurance company that he is working for. The decision leaves Leonard unemployed. The Schlegels somehow feel the guilt of Leonard being unemployed. Ruth passes away, and shortly thereafter, Henry proposes to Margaret and they get engaged. An explosive revelation at Henry´s daughter´s wedding occurs, and Margaret realizes that Henry had had an extramarital affair with Leonard´s wife while Ruth was still alive. Helen feels very badly for Leonard, their mutual sympathy leads to a brief affair, and Helen gets pregnant with his child. Eventually, all of this culminates in a violent and unexpected climax at Howard´s End.

Emma Thompson steals the show with her captivating performance. She perfectly transforms herself into a middle-class London spinster who is sensitive, respectful, sincere, and at the same time firm on various issues. With relative ease she portrays multiple emotions convincingly. In fact, she is the glue of the entire movie and the central character in all the overlapping story lines and subplots. After seeing her performance, it does not come as a surprise to me that she would win an Oscar in the "Best Actress" category several years later in 1995. Even though Anthony Hopkins enters the story after the first forty minutes, he still manages to deliver a memorable performance as a successful British capitalist. His characterization of a rich businessman who is distant, insensitive, and prejudiced against the lower classes is well delivered on the screen. The supporting cast led by Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, and Samuel West is equally impressive.

The script, written by Ruth Jhabvala, is brilliant and textured winning the 1992 Academy Award in the Best Writing Adapted Screenplay category. Of course, a lot of times adapted screenplays do not work because of the complexity of the source material. However, it appears that Jhabvala preserved key elements from the book in translating it for the screen and that nothing got lost in the translation.