by Julian Wood
Worth: $16.00
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Cast:
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Emma Thompson, James Ivory, Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant, Kit Hesketh-Harvey, Ismail Merchant
Intro:
… will appeal to die-hard fans …
Merchant Ivory is like a portmanteau word, as the two individuals – Ismail Merchant and James Ivory – were close collaborators, a partnership both on and off the screen, and their work became an enduring part of British cinema over several decades at the end of the 20th Century.
Another British film icon, Ken Russell once said that he would like it if anyone who walked into the cinema could see a scene or two of a film and say “oh that must be a Ken Russell film”. The same could be true of Merchant Ivory, as the lush and intricately-assembled costume dramas defined their style for many film lovers.
There was an element of the self-referential about some of their work, which allowed people to denigrate them as always making the same film. Some felt that they had become stuck making stylish but ultimately empty historical dramas, but this loving documentary reminds us that there was variation within a set of parameters.
They usually had literary scripts, thanks in large part to their long-term friend and collaborator (who features a lot in the doco) the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She wrote more than half a dozen of their best films, including the adaptation of Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day (1993), which many consider to be their most fully realised project.
The documentary is conventional in approach. It takes the story more or less chronologically, from their early interest in Indian themes and visuals with films like Shakespeare Wallah (1965) to their Crown-like period pieces about the upper class.
Merchant is Indian, and he is described here by one admirer as the apotheosis of erudite Indian charm and intelligence. Ivory was American, but an adopted Brit by the end. He bought a fabulous home in the country and a slew of famous British actors offer grabs about what it was like to visit that house and to be part of the Merchant Ivory circle. Most of their films were made in England, with one or two American films to bolster the box office.
There is a concentration upon the craft, which is understandable given their lush filmmaking, but costume designers and location scouts do not necessarily offer great insights beyond saying how much they enjoyed working with them despite the shoestring budgets and Merchant’s charm substituting for prompt payment.
Then there is the issue of homosexuality, both theirs and in their films. Ivory insists that he was never embarrassed about being gay or aware of much impediment springing from that position. However, with the exception perhaps of their adaptation of E. M. Forster’s semi-autobiographical Maurice in 1987 (a groundbreaking effort to some), there is a delicacy in the treatment of sex and sexuality as a whole in their films. It is not that homosexuality is only in the closet, or that the films are entirely sexless, but somehow, they never strike one as ‘making a fuss’ about it. That may seem old fashioned by today’s standards.
The documentary will appeal to die-hard fans, but given the significance of this creative partnership in the history of cinema, there will be plenty of those.