Downton Abbey in a More Revealing Light

I saw the movie of The Remains of the Day in the mid 90’s and was very impressed by the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.  Something about that film has haunted me ever since. Having read and much appreciated Ishiguro’s more recent NeverLet me Go, I thought I really should read The Remains of the Day.  Booker Prize in 1989.

Two damned good actors.

So glad I did.  Ishiguro is a master of tone and nuance.  Nothing much happens. Recollections of the past and small but telling moments in the present. The book is written in the first person from the point of view of an aging British butler, Mr. Stevens is struggling to keep together a postwar 'aristocratic' household whose past is being called into question, and whose future is at best uncertain. He's stuck in the past and ill-suited to the demands of the postwar present.  But he is also severely limited in the emotional realm, and much of the fascination of the book is that his limitations are revealed only gradually. We come to know him bit by bit through his account of the present and his recollections of the past.  Always it’s the tone that is paramount, and that is constricted by Stevens’s limitations.  There’s much talk of ‘dignity’, and lots of derision of ‘banter’, a modern form of repartee that Stevens finds foreign and repugnant.  But it turns out that 'dignity' can be a way to justify crippling emotional limitations, and 'banter' is a way of representing spontaneity and freedom of expression.

It’s been many years since I saw the film, but memory tells me that it is a faithful expression of the novel’s essential message.  That’s not so common in these days of film adaptations that veer off into Hollywood themes that have little to do with the original text. I’ll revisit the film soon.  Gladly.

For now, I’ll say that Ishiguro is a master prose poet. The writing emits an aura that perfectly describes Stevens’s state of mind.  It’s a chance to enter another’s world, a chance to feel what another feels (or doesn't feel).

Such is good fiction.