Stephen Soucy’s documentary looks back at the creative team behind Merchant Ivory’s enduring classics, including ‘The Bostonians.’
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Written and spoken as if it were one word (like it was in real life), the title “Merchant Ivory” uses, among other things, interviews with actors who worked with the company to examine one of the most fruitful artistic partnerships in 20th-century film history. While James Ivory and Ismail Merchant did not invent independent cinema, one might argue that they perfected it, beginning with such India-set efforts as “The Householder” (1963), “Shakespeare-Wallah” (1965) and “The Guru” (1969), all written or co-written by their friend, frequent collaborator and two-time Academy Award winner Ruth Prawer Jhabvalla (“Howards End”). Director and writer James Ivory, who was born in Oregon, the son of a lumber mill baron, and producer and frequent on-set chef Ismail Merchant, who was from a conservative Mumbai Muslim family, made a remarkably cosmopolitan, if unlikely couple. Jim was the quiet one, who went about his work with an artist’s eye for detail. Ismail, the more boisterous and outgoing of the two, could, according to one unamused interviewee, “charm the birds from the trees.”
After a few misfires, the partners, whose union was both artistic and romantic, hit their stride with “The Europeans” (1979), a costume drama set in the 19th century Boston area and based on a novel by Henry James. With its romantic entanglements, beautiful, civilized people dressed in superbly-tailored togs, stately interiors and lushly-shot landscapes, “The Europeans” was a harbinger of what was to come from Merchant Ivory (and what would lead some critics to accuse them of making “Laura Ashley films”). Soon, actors such as Maggie Smith, Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Christopher Reeve and Vanessa Redgrave—both of “The Bostonians” (1984), another James adaptation—would appear in their films. But the Merchant Ivory team captured lightning in a bottle with “A Room with a View,” a 1985 adaptation of a novel by Edwardian author E.M. Forster (the first of three). Set in a beautifully-photographed Florence, Italy and with a British cast headed by a radiant Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Rupert Graves, Julian Sands and Daniel Day-Lewis, the film became a box-office sensation here and across the pond, sending many of the lovelorn on real flights to Florence.
Cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts (“A Room with a View,” “Slaves of New York,” “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” “Howards End, “The Remains of the Day”), who is also interviewed here and was nominated for two Oscars, must be seen, along with minimalist composer Richard Robbins, whose collaboration began in 1979, as the third and fourth members of the Merchant-Ivory union. The fifth is three-time Academy Award-winning costume designer Jenny Beaven (“The Bostonians,” “A Room with a View,” “Maurice,” “Howards End,” “The Remains of the Day,” “Jefferson in Paris”). Quite a team.
Following the tremendous coup of “A Room with a View,” at the height of the AIDS crisis, Merchant Ivory took a risky step by adapting Forster’s “Maurice,” a novel that went unpublished until the author’s death, about Edwardian-era men engaged in same-sex love affairs. In addition to James Wilby and Rupert Graves, one of the film’s leads was an unbelievably young Hugh Grant, who would also appear in the Merchant Ivory production “The Remains of the Day” (1993) and then catapult to stardom in Mike Newell’s Richard Curtis-scripted hit “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994). In an interview, Grant reveals that he was considering quitting acting before he landed “Maurice.”
A still-living Ivory, whose sole Oscar win is for the screenplay of “Call Me By Your Name” (2017), offers delightful behind-the-scenes insights, although he is still shy about his personal life. Bonham Carter and author Tama Janowitz (“Slaves of New York”) have wry, even raucous observations about their experiences. Emma Thompson (“Howards End,” “The Remains of the Day”) delivers a predictably witty anecdote. The charismatic and, yes, charming Merchant, whose reported mantra was the two-syllables, “Shoot, Jim,” is seen in ample, archival footage, eternally charming.
Director Stephen Soucy previously made a short film about the music of Merchant Ivory films. He arranges his engrossing film into chapters with amusing (mostly) titles. He addresses the work of the Merchant Ivory team in sequence, which is a bit odd at first because you think the film is all about Merchant. Even today, one cannot utter that name without adding the Ivory. Call them by their names.
‘Merchant Ivory’
Rating: Not rated, mature themes.
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Hugh Grant, James Ivory
Director: Stephen Soucy
Writer: Jon Hart, Stephen Soucy
Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes
Where to Watch: Landmark Kendall Square and Plimoth Cinema
Grade: B+
Boston Movie News 