Back in college, a girl I was seeing dragged me to A ROOM WITH A VIEW. The movie, all 36 hours of it, was painfully, excruciatingly long. I promised myself I'd never see another Merchant-Ivory picture again. Well, time dimmed the promise, as it often does, and I queued up HOWARDS END a short while ago.
I liked it. I really liked it. If I had to boil down my reasons, I'd find Emma Thompson's Margaret Schlegle. She begins the movie an engaged, joyful, dynamic woman. As time wears on and her choices tell on her, we see that she's put herself in an ever-shrinking box. We've seen that type of character before, but Thompson's triumph comes from her endowing Margaret with the self-awareness to know whom she is, whom she was, and whom she may become.
Thompson's dedication to her character's full humanity is of a part with the entire film's approach to its characters, its settings, and its situations. HOWARDS END is populated with real people, with real problems, who make real decisions. At no point do we hear the plot's gears grinding, and at no point do we lose our investment in these people. Time with HOWARDS END is time well spent.
But I still won't give A ROOM WITH A VIEW another go. Life's too short.
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