The Remains of the Day
1993
*****
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant, Tim Pigott-Smith, John Haycraft,
Michael Lonsdale, Jeffry Wickham, Paula Jacobs, Ben Chaplin, Lena Headey
A devoted butler named Mr. Stevens looks back at his years of service at Darlington Hall. He reflects on his unwavering but misplaced loyalty to Lord Darlington, an overambitious amateur politician and Nazi sympathiser, and his unspoken love for the housekeeper, Miss Kenton. James Ivory's brilliantly understated but extremely powerful drama tells a heartbreaking story about duty, regrets, and unrequited love. While Emma Thompson is terrific as the patient and resilient housekeeper, Anthony Hopkins is simply mesmerising as the emotionally repressed butler, who must count the personal cost of his choices. "Why? Why, Mr. Stevens, why do you always have to hide what you feel?" Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's wonderfully constructed script was adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 novel.
