Ismail Merchant

Film producer Ismail Merchant has died in London. An immigrant to England from India, he teamed with James Ivory to produce such films as "A Room With A View" and "Howard's End". Their films tended to be well-mannered and British in nature.

It would be inaccurate to say that I was or am a big Merchant-Ivory fan. I've always had a general sort of approval of what I perceive their films to be. I'm glad that someone is making literate movies, movies with character development driving plots, movies that depend on characters and not explosions or gun battles or car chases. Not that I have any problem with explosions or gun battles or car chases, you understand, because they certainly can have their place, and be done well, and work. But there's a limit to how much of that material you need, and Hollywood exceeded it long ago.

As for Mr. Merchant, I find, looking through his filmography that I've only actually seen two of his films. Which does surprise me. Howard's End is a movie that I've watched, but I didn't see it in a theatre, I may have been distracted while it was on, and frankly, it made little impact on me. I honestly don't remember much of anything that happened.

But one of the great movies of the 1990s, in my opinon, was The Remains Of The Day. With great performances from Anthony Hopkins* and Emma Thompson, and strong supporting parts from Christopher Reeve, Edward Fox and even Hugh Grant, it was a strong and subtle character study, that was fascinating to watch unfold. I've not read the book (I hadn't even heard of it before the movie) and I don't know whether it would play well to a fan of the book or not. But as a movie, I think it's a masterpiece.





* - One of the great Oscar injustices took place in 1994, as Tom Hanks won for Philadelphia against vastly superior performances from Liam Neeson in Schindler's List and Anthony Hopkins in The Remains Of The Day. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with Hanks' performance, but it was a pedestrian part in a pedestrian film. There was absolutely nothing about Philadelphia that raised it above the level of a "disease-of-the-week" movie on Lifetime, and Hanks won for one reason, and one reason only. And we all know what it was. It was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences patting themselves on the back for their moral superiority because they "cared" about the plight of people with AIDS. As to the performances themselves, you could have put Hopkins in Philadelphia and it would have worked just fine. As good as Hanks is, he could never have played Stevens in The Remains Of The Day successfully...