| The Remains of the Day | |
| Director: | James Ivory |
| Music: | Richard Robbins |
| Color Process: | Technicolor |
| Cinematography: | Tony Pierce-Roberts |
| Editing: | Andrew Marcus |
| Studio: | Merchant Ivory Productions |
| Distributor: | Columbia Pictures |
| Runtime: | 134 minutes |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $15 million |
| Gross: | $63.9 million[1] |
The Remains of the Day is a 1993 drama film adapted from the Booker Prize-winning 1989 novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro. The film was directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols, and John Calley and adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It stars Anthony Hopkins as James Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton, with James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant, Ben Chaplin, and Lena Headey in supporting roles.
The film was a critical and box office success and it was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Hopkins), Best Actress (Thompson) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Jhabvala). In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked The Remains of the Day the 64th-greatest British film of the 20th century.[2]
In 1958 postwar Britain, Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, receives a letter from the former housekeeper, Miss Kenton. Their past employer, the Earl of Darlington, has died a broken man, his reputation destroyed by his pre-Second World War support of Nazi Germany, and his stately country house has been sold to retired US Congressman Jack Lewis. Allowed to borrow the Daimler, Stevens sets off for the West Country to see Miss Kenton for the first time in decades.
A flashback to the 1930s shows Kenton's arrival at Darlington Hall, where the ever-efficient but deeply repressed Stevens derives his entire identity from his profession. He butts heads with the warmer, strong-willed Kenton, particularly when he refuses to acknowledge that his father, now an under-butler, is no longer able to perform his duties.
Displaying total professionalism, Stevens carries on as his father lies dying during Darlington's conference of like-minded fascist-sympathising British and European aristocrats. Also in attendance is Congressman Lewis, who admonishes the "gentleman politicians" as meddling amateurs, advising that "Europe has become the arena of Realpolitik" and warning of impending disaster.
Exposed to Nazi racial laws, Darlington gets Stevens to dismiss two newly appointed refugee German-Jewish maids despite his protest. Kenton threatens to resign but has nowhere to go, and a regretful Darlington is later unable to rehire the maids. Later Stevens is unable to answer an aristocratic guest's questions on global trade and politics, which the aristocrat claims to demonstrate the lower classes' ignorance and inability to govern themselves.
Relations thaw between Stevens and Kenton and she clearly shows her feelings for him, but the outwardly detached Stevens remains dedicated solely to his role as butler. She catches him reading a romance novel, which he explains is to improve his vocabulary, asking her not to invade his privacy again.
Lord Darlington's godson, journalist Reginald Cardinal, arrives on the day of a secret meeting at Darlington Hall between the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and the German ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Appalled by his godfather's role in seeking appeasement for Nazi Germany, Cardinal tells Stevens that Darlington is being used by the Nazis, but Stevens feels it is not his place to judge his employer.
Kenton forms a relationship with former co-worker Tom Benn and accepts his proposal of marriage. She informs Stevens as an ultimatum, but he will not admit his feelings and only offers his congratulations. Finding her crying, his only response is to call her attention to a neglected domestic task, and she leaves Darlington Hall before the start of the Second World War.
En route to meeting Kenton in 1958, Stevens is mistaken for the gentry at a pub. Doctor Carlisle, a local GP, helps him refuel the Daimler and deduces that he is actually a manservant, asking his thoughts about Lord Darlington's actions. Denying having even met him, Stevens later admits to having served and respected him but Darlington confessed that his Nazi sympathies had been misguided and naive.
Stevens declares that, although Lord Darlington was unable to correct his error, he is attempting to correct his own. He meets Kenton, who has separated from her husband and runs a boarding house on the coast. They reminisce that Lord Darlington died from a broken heart after suing a newspaper for libel, losing the suit and his reputation, and Stevens mentions that Cardinal was killed in the war.
Kenton, now Mrs Benn, declines to resume her position at Darlington Hall, wishing to remain near her pregnant daughter and, despite years of unhappiness, thinking about going back to her husband. Stevens supposes they may never meet again and they part fondly but are both quietly upset, Miss Kenton visibly tearful as her bus pulls away.
Stevens returns to Darlington Hall, where Lewis asks if he remembers the old days, and Stevens replies that he was too busy serving. The two men free a pigeon from the house and it flies away, leaving Stevens and Darlington Hall far behind. The image then rises slowly, moving away from the large building, alone in the heart of the vast estate, surrounded by valleys and woods.
A film adaptation of the novel was originally planned to be directed by Mike Nichols from a script by Harold Pinter. Meryl Streep’s then-agent, Sam Cohn, and the director sold her on the plum role of Miss Kenton. Both Meryl and Jeremy Irons read for Nichols, but the filmmaker opted not to cast them in roles later filled by Emma Thompson (ten years Meryl’s junior) and Anthony Hopkins (twenty years Emma’s senior). Cohn, who was also Nichols’s agent, didn’t make it clear to Meryl that she was no longer a candidate for Miss Kenton, she only learned later, after reading about Thompson’s casting. Shortly thereafter Streep made headlines after she fired her long time, east coast agent, signing with rival agent Bryan Lourd at the powerful Creative Artists Agency.[3] Some of Pinter's script was used in the film, but, while Pinter was paid for his work, he asked to have his name removed from the credits, in keeping with his contract.