Howards End (1992) [Blu-ray]
Drama | Romance

The Criterion Collection

The pinnacle of the decades-long collaboration between director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, Howards End is a thought-provoking, luminous vision of E. M. Forster's cutting 1910 novel about class divisions in Edwardian England. Emma Thompson won an Academy Award for her dynamic portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, a flighty yet compassionate middle-class intellectual whose friendship with the dying wife (Vanessa Redgrave) of rich capitalist Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) commences an intricately woven tale of money, love, and death that encompasses the country's highest and lowest social echelons. With a brilliant, layered script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who also won an Oscar) and a roster of gripping performances, Howards End is a work of both great beauty and vivid darkness, and one of cinema's greatest literary adaptations.

User Comment: addyd, 28 July 2003 • ...and I must admit that on the first viewing, I didn't get it myself.

I'm one of those relative rarities: a straight male that normally enjoys Merchant-Ivory productions. However, I disliked this movie on first viewing (several years ago). In retrospect, I can see that I was not reacting to the movie, but my intense dislike for Anthony Hopkins' character.

I watched it again the other night and was absolutely blown away by it. What a film! Emma Thompson won Best Actress for her performance, and she did her usual terrific job, but frankly I was more impressed by the performance of Helena Bonham Carter. The style of the film is magnificent.

This is a story (like most of E. M. Forster's) about the injustices of class distinctions. However, with a subtlety that I missed on my first viewing, this film is also about karma (what goes around - comes around) and a story of social progress. This film is set in a time when society is coming out of the Victorian age and into the Edwardian. You see contrasts of the past thinking with the progressive thinking all through the movie. A visual metaphor is repeated over and over: the turning of cranks, whether it be on a new-fangled morse code machine, a vintage car, or the wheels of a mighty locomotive. I believe that this represents both karma and progress, forces which Forster sees as unstoppable as the laws of nature.

This is an incredible story, and an incredible piece of film-making.

Summary: Superb!! Or perhaps you just don't get it...

[CSW] -4- The author is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. This is a fine example that hypocrisy as well as his humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy as was excellently portrayed by the Oscar winning performance of Emma Thompson as Margaret J. 'Meg' Schlegel. An absolute must see.

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