← Back to Reviews
in
The Remains of the Day (1993)
Lookback/Review by Markdc
I just love good, intelligent romantic movies and prefer to have the man and woman be together at the end and live happily ever after. I always cry out of happiness whenever I watch films like An Officer and a Gentleman, It Could Happen to You, and You’ve Got Mail. And I cry out of sadness when the man or woman dies at the end, like in Titanic, or when both of them die, as happens in Atonement. (Well, usually it’s a man and a woman we’re talking about here. However, I gather that cinematic romances featuring two men or two women are becoming more prevalent now. Admittedly, I haven’t seen many of these, but I thought Brokeback Mountain and Monster were terrific, though they weren’t exactly feel-good movies.) But even in these tragic cases, at least the protagonists found love, however brief that turned out to be. Because after all, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. And speaking of which, the saddest romantic movie I have ever seen has got to be The Remains of the Day.
The Remains of the Day, directed by James Ivory and based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, is set in England both before and after the Second World War. The movie opens in the year 1958 when Mr. James Stevens, who has worked as the butler of a large, opulent manor home called Darlington Hall for the last several decades, travels to the western part of the country to see Mrs. Sarah “Sally” Benn. Benn served as the housekeeper at Darlington Hall in the 1930’s, and her and Stevens’ employer was the Earl of Darlington, better known as Lord Darlington, who supported Nazi Germany and died after the war. Darlington Hall now belongs to Jack Lewis, a retired American congressman. Lewis graciously lends Stevens one of his luxurious automobiles so that the latter can go and meet Benn. Benn, who at the time of their service together was called Miss Kenton, has recently sent Stevens a letter saying she might divorce her husband and yearns to return to her life as a housekeeper. Stevens, who’s been dealing with a staff shortage problem, hopes to persuade Been to accept her former post at Darlington Hall. Most of the movie consists of flashbacks interspersed with scenes of Stevens’ journey to the West Country.
Shortly after Miss Kenton’s arrival at Lord Darlington’s manor house in the 1930’s, a mutual romantic attraction between her and Mr. Stevens begins to develop. However, Mr. Stevens, a shy, reserved man who’s been reared in a life of service, focuses all his energies into carrying out the duties of a butler and buries his feelings for Miss Kenton in a place where nobody—including himself—can reach them. For her part, Miss Kenton is also devoted to her work, but throughout the several years she spends with Mr. Stevens at Darlington Hall, she makes a number of attempts to get close to the butler but is rebuffed at every turn. Around this time, events of international significance are taking place within the walls of the house. Lord Darlington hosts a peace conference and invites politicians and aristocrats from Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States—most of whom are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers like Darlington himself. Later on, he convenes a secret meeting between Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the ambassador of Germany. Reginald Cardinal, Lord Darlington’s godson and a budding journalist, sees all this and grows alarmed. He confides to Mr. Stevens his belief that the Nazis are using his godfather as a pawn and tries to enlist the butler in his effort to put a stop to it. However, Mr. Stevens refuses the younger man’s entreaties out of a sense of duty to his master. Meanwhile, Miss Kenton, frustrated by her futile attempts to penetrate Mr. Stevens’ wall of cold professionalism, hooks up with a former co-worker named James Benn. He persuades her to marry him, and she leaves Darlington Hall shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
Flash forward to 1958. Stevens meets Miss Kenton, now Mrs. Benn, at a seaside hotel. They discuss the late Lord Darlington, who died of a broken heart after his godson was killed in the war and his reputation was ruined following an unsuccessful libel suit against a newspaper that publicly accused him of treason. But when Stevens brings up the issue of future employment at Darlington Hall, Benn tells him that she has decided to remain in the West Country and return to her husband because their daughter is expecting a baby. This is a crushing disappointment for Stevens, and it becomes clear that he didn’t want Benn to come back to Darlington Hall in order to alleviate his staff problems; in truth, he loved her, just as she loved him. He also regretted pushing her away all those years ago and had hoped to correct this mistake. After the two of them have an amicable but unhappy parting, Stevens drives back to Darlington Hall to continue carrying out his butler duties for Mr. Lewis.
When The Remains of the Day was released on November 5, 1993, it received a rapturous reception from professional critics, who praised almost all aspects of the production, especially the directing, acting, and writing. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert, for example, awarded the movie 3.5 out of 4 stars and called The Remains of the Day “quiet, introspective, thoughtful,” and his sparring partner Gene Siskel thought it was a “magnificent film.” Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter’s David Hunter wrote, “The Remains of the Day packs enough passion and emotional resonance to appeal to a wide variety of audiences” and predicted—correctly—that the movie was “bound for glory.” At the box office, The Remains of the Day was a commercial success, grossing nearly $64 million on a $15 million budget, and when the Academy Awards rolled around, the film received eight nominations, including Best Picture, though it failed to win any of them. In a different year, this movie would surely have nabbed a treasure trove of Oscar gold, but 1993 was, of course, the year of Schindler’s List, which captured most of the awards that The Remains of the Day was nominated for. However, The Remains of the Day remains a beloved film with critics and audiences alike; it currently enjoys an incredible 95 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an A- grade on CinemaScore.
Personally, I’m just crazy about this movie. The Remains of the Day may be the saddest cinematic romance that I’ve ever seen, but it’s also one of the best. (I also enjoy movies that take place in large English country houses.) Almost everything about this film is perfect, starting with the cast. The Remains of the Day is one of many films that demonstrates why British actors are among the finest in the world. The indomitable Anthony Hopkins plays Mr. Stevens as a taciturn, hidebound man whose dedication to his lord serves as a suit of armor to guard his thoughts and feelings and protect himself from the threat of intimacy. Throughout his career, Hopkins has given a number of incredible performances in movies such as The Silence of the Lambs and Nixon, and his work in The Remains of the Day surely ranks among his best. Emma Thompson, another cinematic godsend, is no less brilliant as Miss Kenton, a woman who’s the equal of Stevens in terms of her professionalism but, unlike the butler, isn’t afraid to express her feelings. The supporting players are uniformly excellent. James Fox portrays Lord Darlington as the quintessential English gentleman aristocrat, a man whose naivete, highborn prejudices, and sense of fair play blinds him to evil and causes him to make a series of decisions that ultimately results in his demise. I enjoyed watching Christopher Reeve, most famous for playing Superman, as Congressman Lewis. In addition to appearing at the beginning and end of the film, Lewis is in several flashback scenes, for he was a participant in the international conference held at Darlington Hall, and at one point, he gives a captivating speech about the perils of “gentlemen” diplomacy. And a young Hugh Grant is a delight as Reginald Cardinal, Lord Darlington’s godson. (Grant’s performance in The Remains of the Day came just four months before his breakout role in the hit romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral.)
The Remains of the Day was truly a high point for the longtime partnership of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Over many years, the three of them gained widespread popularity and critical recognition for their sumptuous literary adaptations, which were made under the banner of their film company, Merchant Ivory Productions. In addition to The Remains of the Day, two other films from Merchant Ivory, Howard’s End (which also starred Hopkins and Thompson) and A Room with a View, received nominations for the Best Picture Oscar. All three of these movies are cinematic classics, but The Remains of the Day is my favorite of the bunch. In my opinion, the best thing about this movie is Jhabvala’s script. Translating the novel’s first-person narrative to the screen couldn’t have been easy, but she pulls it off with flying colors. Jhabvala received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and if Schindler’s List—which boasted an even better screenplay adaptation by Steven Zaillian that ended up winning the Oscar—hadn’t also come out in 1993, I would have said she deserved the award for The Remains of the Day. However, one aspect of this otherwise magnificent production that I find underwhelming is the score by composer Richard Robbins. The music isn’t terrible, it’s just dull and forgettable. Of the eight Academy Award nominations that the movie nabbed, the one for Best Original Score was undeserved in my opinion. If it had been up to me, I would have given Robbins’ nomination to John Williams for his sublime score to Jurassic Park. Still, I’m not complaining since the Maestro won the Oscar that year for Schindler’s List.
Because of Mr. Stevens’ personality and the fact that The Remains of the Day is told almost entirely from his point of view, we usually don’t learn what he’s really thinking, and this mystery is the movie’s most fascinating aspect. He serves Lord Darlington to the best of his abilities despite the morally dubious things the latter says and does, and we never know whether Stevens actually agrees with his employer; this is because, in Stevens’ view, it’s not his place to question his master’s judgment. He doesn’t even seem to mind when Lord Darlington summons him to the sitting room so that one of the earl’s guests can embarrass the butler in front of the other guests in order to prove a point he is making. Stevens’ unstinting loyalty to Lord Darlington renders him blind to the international peril around him, but there are other factors at work here. For example, throughout the movie, it’s clear that Stevens is dazzled by his involvement, however peripheral, in major political events; they give him a sense of outsized importance. In a scene that takes place in the postwar period, he stays at a hotel during his journey to the West Country and regales the other guests with tales of meeting famous Britons, such as Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. When Stevens does this, he speaks as though he rubbed shoulders with these men as an equal as opposed to doing so merely as a servant.
I admire how the movie reveals Mr. Stevens’ feelings for Miss Kenton in rare, subtle moments—usually just a look or a few words. It’s clear that he loves her but is scared to death of personal intimacy. The reason for this can’t just be his reserved nature or his devotion to duty. There’s a scene where Stevens’ father William, whom he has brought to Darlington Hall to serve as the underbutler, is lying on his deathbed, and at one point, William informs his son that “I fell out of love with your mother.” This has always made me wonder if the younger Stevens grew up in an unhappy household with two parents who didn’t care for each other; if true, perhaps that would explain why he’s afraid to fall in love. Regardless of the reason, his acts of resistance to Miss Kenton’s efforts to get close to him are almost painful to watch. For instance, early in the film, she brings flowers into Stevens’ personal quarters to brighten them up, but when she offers to get more flowers, he calls them a “distraction” and instructs her to refer to his father as “Mr. Stevens” or “Mr. Stevens Sr.” instead of “William,” despite the fact that, as the housekeeper, she outranks the elder Stevens. In another scene, after Miss Kenton discovers, to her shock, that Mr. Stevens is reading a romance novel, he comes up with a super-lame excuse about wanting to “improve” his vocabulary and asks her not to disturb his alone time. And near the end of The Remains of the Day, in what must surely be the movie’s most difficult scene, Mr. Stevens walks by Miss Kenton’s quarters and hears the sound of weeping. Her tears are a result of her frustrated attempts to breach the butler’s formal, rigid personality and touch him emotionally, though whether or not he discerns this is never made clear. Stevens goes into Miss Kenton’s room, and for a brief, hopeful moment, it appears as if he might finally bare out his soul and express his true feelings for her. However, he can’t bring himself to do this, and instead he stiffly requests that she look into a domestic matter.
The Remains of the Day is also fascinating from a historical perspective in that the international conferences and meetings held at Darlington Hall are a perfect microcosm of Great Britain’s policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler in the years leading up to the Second World War. Lord Darlington is emblematic of the many British government officials and aristocrats who sympathized with or outright supported Nazi Germany. And the movie does a good job of portraying the genteel anti-Semitism that was rife among Britain’s ruling classes during this period. There are several scenes where Lord Darlington and his peers enthusiastically praise the supposed virtues of Nazi authoritarianism and denigrate their own nation’s democratic traditions while expressing no concern over the increasingly alarming plight of Germany’s Jews. About midway through the movie, two German-Jewish refugee girls join the domestic staff at Darlington Hall. Lord Darlington welcomes them with open arms, but sometime later, after being exposed to Nazi propaganda, he orders Stevens to let them go and doesn’t seem to care at all that they might be deported back to the Third Reich—an action that would have amounted to a virtual death sentence. Although he eventually comes to regret this and unsuccessfully tries to rehire the girls, Lord Darlington’s initial decision to fire them as well as the pro-Nazi views that he and his fellow aristocrats express shows that, while they may not have been beating up Jews, vandalizing Jewish shops, or torching synagogues, their anti-Semitism was no less cruel in its cold indifference.
The only criticism that I have of The Remains of the Day comes not from what’s in the movie but, rather, what was left out. For me, the most crucial scene in the book comes at the end when Mr. Stevens is meeting with Mrs. Benn, and she tells him that she sometimes imagines the life the two of them could have made together. Then Stevens, the book’s narrator, tells the reader, “Why should I not admit it? In that moment, my heart was breaking.” This scene was filmed but left out of the final cut; it’s available in the “Special Features” section of the DVD. I believe this was a mistake because of the scene’s importance and the fact that Stevens’ heartbreak is perfectly captured onscreen by the look on Hopkins’ face and the sound of his voice when he replies.
The Remains of the Day presents a perfect example of the inner conflict I sometimes feel between what I want a movie to do and what I know a movie should do. Whenever I watch this film, I have to resist the urge to shout at Mr. Stevens to stop being such a blockhead and take Miss Kenton in his arms and kiss her. I yearn so much for the two of them to express their love for one another and go away together, whether in the movie’s 1930’s section or the one set in the 1950’s. However, I’m also aware that if the movie had ended this way, it wouldn’t be nearly as good. As I mentioned above, romantic flicks like Titanic and Atonement may have sad endings, but at least the protagonists had each other for a time. However, love cannot be expressed or enjoyed in The Remains of the Day. The movie’s conclusion is heartbreaking but necessary because it shows what happens when you choose service to others over personal happiness. For whatever reason, Mr. Stevens felt the need to place duty over desire, and now duty is all he has left—well, that and the knowledge he has made a terrible mistake and one he will have to live with for the remainder of his days.
Lookback/Review by Markdc
I just love good, intelligent romantic movies and prefer to have the man and woman be together at the end and live happily ever after. I always cry out of happiness whenever I watch films like An Officer and a Gentleman, It Could Happen to You, and You’ve Got Mail. And I cry out of sadness when the man or woman dies at the end, like in Titanic, or when both of them die, as happens in Atonement. (Well, usually it’s a man and a woman we’re talking about here. However, I gather that cinematic romances featuring two men or two women are becoming more prevalent now. Admittedly, I haven’t seen many of these, but I thought Brokeback Mountain and Monster were terrific, though they weren’t exactly feel-good movies.) But even in these tragic cases, at least the protagonists found love, however brief that turned out to be. Because after all, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. And speaking of which, the saddest romantic movie I have ever seen has got to be The Remains of the Day.
The Remains of the Day, directed by James Ivory and based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, is set in England both before and after the Second World War. The movie opens in the year 1958 when Mr. James Stevens, who has worked as the butler of a large, opulent manor home called Darlington Hall for the last several decades, travels to the western part of the country to see Mrs. Sarah “Sally” Benn. Benn served as the housekeeper at Darlington Hall in the 1930’s, and her and Stevens’ employer was the Earl of Darlington, better known as Lord Darlington, who supported Nazi Germany and died after the war. Darlington Hall now belongs to Jack Lewis, a retired American congressman. Lewis graciously lends Stevens one of his luxurious automobiles so that the latter can go and meet Benn. Benn, who at the time of their service together was called Miss Kenton, has recently sent Stevens a letter saying she might divorce her husband and yearns to return to her life as a housekeeper. Stevens, who’s been dealing with a staff shortage problem, hopes to persuade Been to accept her former post at Darlington Hall. Most of the movie consists of flashbacks interspersed with scenes of Stevens’ journey to the West Country.
Shortly after Miss Kenton’s arrival at Lord Darlington’s manor house in the 1930’s, a mutual romantic attraction between her and Mr. Stevens begins to develop. However, Mr. Stevens, a shy, reserved man who’s been reared in a life of service, focuses all his energies into carrying out the duties of a butler and buries his feelings for Miss Kenton in a place where nobody—including himself—can reach them. For her part, Miss Kenton is also devoted to her work, but throughout the several years she spends with Mr. Stevens at Darlington Hall, she makes a number of attempts to get close to the butler but is rebuffed at every turn. Around this time, events of international significance are taking place within the walls of the house. Lord Darlington hosts a peace conference and invites politicians and aristocrats from Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States—most of whom are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers like Darlington himself. Later on, he convenes a secret meeting between Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the ambassador of Germany. Reginald Cardinal, Lord Darlington’s godson and a budding journalist, sees all this and grows alarmed. He confides to Mr. Stevens his belief that the Nazis are using his godfather as a pawn and tries to enlist the butler in his effort to put a stop to it. However, Mr. Stevens refuses the younger man’s entreaties out of a sense of duty to his master. Meanwhile, Miss Kenton, frustrated by her futile attempts to penetrate Mr. Stevens’ wall of cold professionalism, hooks up with a former co-worker named James Benn. He persuades her to marry him, and she leaves Darlington Hall shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
Flash forward to 1958. Stevens meets Miss Kenton, now Mrs. Benn, at a seaside hotel. They discuss the late Lord Darlington, who died of a broken heart after his godson was killed in the war and his reputation was ruined following an unsuccessful libel suit against a newspaper that publicly accused him of treason. But when Stevens brings up the issue of future employment at Darlington Hall, Benn tells him that she has decided to remain in the West Country and return to her husband because their daughter is expecting a baby. This is a crushing disappointment for Stevens, and it becomes clear that he didn’t want Benn to come back to Darlington Hall in order to alleviate his staff problems; in truth, he loved her, just as she loved him. He also regretted pushing her away all those years ago and had hoped to correct this mistake. After the two of them have an amicable but unhappy parting, Stevens drives back to Darlington Hall to continue carrying out his butler duties for Mr. Lewis.
When The Remains of the Day was released on November 5, 1993, it received a rapturous reception from professional critics, who praised almost all aspects of the production, especially the directing, acting, and writing. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert, for example, awarded the movie 3.5 out of 4 stars and called The Remains of the Day “quiet, introspective, thoughtful,” and his sparring partner Gene Siskel thought it was a “magnificent film.” Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter’s David Hunter wrote, “The Remains of the Day packs enough passion and emotional resonance to appeal to a wide variety of audiences” and predicted—correctly—that the movie was “bound for glory.” At the box office, The Remains of the Day was a commercial success, grossing nearly $64 million on a $15 million budget, and when the Academy Awards rolled around, the film received eight nominations, including Best Picture, though it failed to win any of them. In a different year, this movie would surely have nabbed a treasure trove of Oscar gold, but 1993 was, of course, the year of Schindler’s List, which captured most of the awards that The Remains of the Day was nominated for. However, The Remains of the Day remains a beloved film with critics and audiences alike; it currently enjoys an incredible 95 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an A- grade on CinemaScore.
Personally, I’m just crazy about this movie. The Remains of the Day may be the saddest cinematic romance that I’ve ever seen, but it’s also one of the best. (I also enjoy movies that take place in large English country houses.) Almost everything about this film is perfect, starting with the cast. The Remains of the Day is one of many films that demonstrates why British actors are among the finest in the world. The indomitable Anthony Hopkins plays Mr. Stevens as a taciturn, hidebound man whose dedication to his lord serves as a suit of armor to guard his thoughts and feelings and protect himself from the threat of intimacy. Throughout his career, Hopkins has given a number of incredible performances in movies such as The Silence of the Lambs and Nixon, and his work in The Remains of the Day surely ranks among his best. Emma Thompson, another cinematic godsend, is no less brilliant as Miss Kenton, a woman who’s the equal of Stevens in terms of her professionalism but, unlike the butler, isn’t afraid to express her feelings. The supporting players are uniformly excellent. James Fox portrays Lord Darlington as the quintessential English gentleman aristocrat, a man whose naivete, highborn prejudices, and sense of fair play blinds him to evil and causes him to make a series of decisions that ultimately results in his demise. I enjoyed watching Christopher Reeve, most famous for playing Superman, as Congressman Lewis. In addition to appearing at the beginning and end of the film, Lewis is in several flashback scenes, for he was a participant in the international conference held at Darlington Hall, and at one point, he gives a captivating speech about the perils of “gentlemen” diplomacy. And a young Hugh Grant is a delight as Reginald Cardinal, Lord Darlington’s godson. (Grant’s performance in The Remains of the Day came just four months before his breakout role in the hit romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral.)
The Remains of the Day was truly a high point for the longtime partnership of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Over many years, the three of them gained widespread popularity and critical recognition for their sumptuous literary adaptations, which were made under the banner of their film company, Merchant Ivory Productions. In addition to The Remains of the Day, two other films from Merchant Ivory, Howard’s End (which also starred Hopkins and Thompson) and A Room with a View, received nominations for the Best Picture Oscar. All three of these movies are cinematic classics, but The Remains of the Day is my favorite of the bunch. In my opinion, the best thing about this movie is Jhabvala’s script. Translating the novel’s first-person narrative to the screen couldn’t have been easy, but she pulls it off with flying colors. Jhabvala received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and if Schindler’s List—which boasted an even better screenplay adaptation by Steven Zaillian that ended up winning the Oscar—hadn’t also come out in 1993, I would have said she deserved the award for The Remains of the Day. However, one aspect of this otherwise magnificent production that I find underwhelming is the score by composer Richard Robbins. The music isn’t terrible, it’s just dull and forgettable. Of the eight Academy Award nominations that the movie nabbed, the one for Best Original Score was undeserved in my opinion. If it had been up to me, I would have given Robbins’ nomination to John Williams for his sublime score to Jurassic Park. Still, I’m not complaining since the Maestro won the Oscar that year for Schindler’s List.
Because of Mr. Stevens’ personality and the fact that The Remains of the Day is told almost entirely from his point of view, we usually don’t learn what he’s really thinking, and this mystery is the movie’s most fascinating aspect. He serves Lord Darlington to the best of his abilities despite the morally dubious things the latter says and does, and we never know whether Stevens actually agrees with his employer; this is because, in Stevens’ view, it’s not his place to question his master’s judgment. He doesn’t even seem to mind when Lord Darlington summons him to the sitting room so that one of the earl’s guests can embarrass the butler in front of the other guests in order to prove a point he is making. Stevens’ unstinting loyalty to Lord Darlington renders him blind to the international peril around him, but there are other factors at work here. For example, throughout the movie, it’s clear that Stevens is dazzled by his involvement, however peripheral, in major political events; they give him a sense of outsized importance. In a scene that takes place in the postwar period, he stays at a hotel during his journey to the West Country and regales the other guests with tales of meeting famous Britons, such as Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. When Stevens does this, he speaks as though he rubbed shoulders with these men as an equal as opposed to doing so merely as a servant.
I admire how the movie reveals Mr. Stevens’ feelings for Miss Kenton in rare, subtle moments—usually just a look or a few words. It’s clear that he loves her but is scared to death of personal intimacy. The reason for this can’t just be his reserved nature or his devotion to duty. There’s a scene where Stevens’ father William, whom he has brought to Darlington Hall to serve as the underbutler, is lying on his deathbed, and at one point, William informs his son that “I fell out of love with your mother.” This has always made me wonder if the younger Stevens grew up in an unhappy household with two parents who didn’t care for each other; if true, perhaps that would explain why he’s afraid to fall in love. Regardless of the reason, his acts of resistance to Miss Kenton’s efforts to get close to him are almost painful to watch. For instance, early in the film, she brings flowers into Stevens’ personal quarters to brighten them up, but when she offers to get more flowers, he calls them a “distraction” and instructs her to refer to his father as “Mr. Stevens” or “Mr. Stevens Sr.” instead of “William,” despite the fact that, as the housekeeper, she outranks the elder Stevens. In another scene, after Miss Kenton discovers, to her shock, that Mr. Stevens is reading a romance novel, he comes up with a super-lame excuse about wanting to “improve” his vocabulary and asks her not to disturb his alone time. And near the end of The Remains of the Day, in what must surely be the movie’s most difficult scene, Mr. Stevens walks by Miss Kenton’s quarters and hears the sound of weeping. Her tears are a result of her frustrated attempts to breach the butler’s formal, rigid personality and touch him emotionally, though whether or not he discerns this is never made clear. Stevens goes into Miss Kenton’s room, and for a brief, hopeful moment, it appears as if he might finally bare out his soul and express his true feelings for her. However, he can’t bring himself to do this, and instead he stiffly requests that she look into a domestic matter.
The Remains of the Day is also fascinating from a historical perspective in that the international conferences and meetings held at Darlington Hall are a perfect microcosm of Great Britain’s policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler in the years leading up to the Second World War. Lord Darlington is emblematic of the many British government officials and aristocrats who sympathized with or outright supported Nazi Germany. And the movie does a good job of portraying the genteel anti-Semitism that was rife among Britain’s ruling classes during this period. There are several scenes where Lord Darlington and his peers enthusiastically praise the supposed virtues of Nazi authoritarianism and denigrate their own nation’s democratic traditions while expressing no concern over the increasingly alarming plight of Germany’s Jews. About midway through the movie, two German-Jewish refugee girls join the domestic staff at Darlington Hall. Lord Darlington welcomes them with open arms, but sometime later, after being exposed to Nazi propaganda, he orders Stevens to let them go and doesn’t seem to care at all that they might be deported back to the Third Reich—an action that would have amounted to a virtual death sentence. Although he eventually comes to regret this and unsuccessfully tries to rehire the girls, Lord Darlington’s initial decision to fire them as well as the pro-Nazi views that he and his fellow aristocrats express shows that, while they may not have been beating up Jews, vandalizing Jewish shops, or torching synagogues, their anti-Semitism was no less cruel in its cold indifference.
The only criticism that I have of The Remains of the Day comes not from what’s in the movie but, rather, what was left out. For me, the most crucial scene in the book comes at the end when Mr. Stevens is meeting with Mrs. Benn, and she tells him that she sometimes imagines the life the two of them could have made together. Then Stevens, the book’s narrator, tells the reader, “Why should I not admit it? In that moment, my heart was breaking.” This scene was filmed but left out of the final cut; it’s available in the “Special Features” section of the DVD. I believe this was a mistake because of the scene’s importance and the fact that Stevens’ heartbreak is perfectly captured onscreen by the look on Hopkins’ face and the sound of his voice when he replies.
The Remains of the Day presents a perfect example of the inner conflict I sometimes feel between what I want a movie to do and what I know a movie should do. Whenever I watch this film, I have to resist the urge to shout at Mr. Stevens to stop being such a blockhead and take Miss Kenton in his arms and kiss her. I yearn so much for the two of them to express their love for one another and go away together, whether in the movie’s 1930’s section or the one set in the 1950’s. However, I’m also aware that if the movie had ended this way, it wouldn’t be nearly as good. As I mentioned above, romantic flicks like Titanic and Atonement may have sad endings, but at least the protagonists had each other for a time. However, love cannot be expressed or enjoyed in The Remains of the Day. The movie’s conclusion is heartbreaking but necessary because it shows what happens when you choose service to others over personal happiness. For whatever reason, Mr. Stevens felt the need to place duty over desire, and now duty is all he has left—well, that and the knowledge he has made a terrible mistake and one he will have to live with for the remainder of his days.