Howards End (1992)

Director James Ivory, producer Ismael Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have formed one of the longest lasting partnerships in cinema. They have made 21 films together (and counting), dating all the way back to 1963.

Perhaps the best of these is A Room with a View (1986). Like that film, Howards End is based on a novel by E.M. Forster, is a sumptuous period drama, stars Helena Bonham Carter, and was nominated for a pile of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography (Tony Pierce-Roberts). There the similarity ends, however. A Room with a View is by far the better film.

Despite the critical praise heaped on Howards End, it doesn't compare well with the earlier costume drama. Perhaps the story is too elaborate and unfocused. More likely it is the characters, which are not as compelling, and sometimes even stereotypical.

Howards End is a mansion in the English countryside owned by the Wilcox family. The year is 1910. The Wilcoxes are headed by well-spoken but ungenerous Henry (Anthony Hopkins). His wife is the much nicer Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave). Their stupid, sneering snob children are young adults, and have married stupid, sneering spouses. The most pompous among them is Charles (James Wilby). Perhaps the best of the lot is Paul (Joseph Bennett).

Through a series of coincidences, the Wilcox family has recurring contact with the Schlegel siblings. They are Margaret (Emma Thompson), Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), and Tibby (Adrian Ross-Magenty). Margaret is nice but practical, Helen is headstrong and romantic, and Tibby spends the film idly observing his sister's foibles.

The Schlegels are as liberated and warm-hearted as the Wilcoxes are snobbish and selfish. Their differences are represented by their attitudes towards Howards End. The Wilcoxes view it as provincial and inadequate, the Schlegels see it as quaint and elegant.

However, the real conflicts between the family are over a modest young clerk named Leonard Bast (Samuel West). Bast is engaged to clinging, frumpy former prostitute Jacky (Nicola Duffet). His career is ruined by Henry's indifference and Helen's well-intentioned but foolish interference. Henry's past relationship with Jacky is a coincidence so preposterous and an event so unlikely that it could only happen in a movie.

These differing family values don't prevent Paul from having an affair with Helen, Margaret from becoming close friends with sickly Ruth (we know that she is sick because she is languid and speaks slowly), or Margaret from having romantic entanglements with the much older and more aloof Henry.

Thompson would win an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance. The Academy Award she really deserved, however, is for Most Likeable Actress. Intelligent, pleasant, sympathetic and level-headed, her character is the kind of woman that anyone would want for a best friend.

Hopkins, however, has the more difficult role. He can be charming, cruel, selfish, generous, arrogant, practical, and hypocritical. He's never impulsive, but otherwise there's no telling how he will react to a situation. His character inconsistencies are very frustrating to follow. Hopkins and Thompson would be reunited the following year in another Ivory-Merchant production, The Remains of the Day (1993). (54/100)