This movie quietly defines the quietly adventurous. It’s so basic Mise-en-scène and placid and it should be boring but it isn’t because there’s a reasoning behind the dull stylistics. These were Edwardian times; apparently you couldn’t say what you think and lived a life of repressed longings (to speak) or whatever.
Hopkins is out of this world here; he is incapable of ‘normal’. He can barely hold a conversation with another actor; almost everything he does is a monologue. He is unique and he didn’t become Hannibal for no apparent reason.
Despite their apparent quaintness, Merchant–Ivory did make some crackers. The Remains of the Day (1993) is their undoubted masterpiece, a Hopkins masterclass again. This is the prototype for these type of movies, of which there are more and more these days because they are a safe bet. None are any good, however. I took one look at a recent upstairs-downstairs thing and turned it off after 178 seconds.
Most of this shite is just … shite we send to our former colonial subjects. They think we are actually like this.
Nonsense.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 