Duty, Honor, and the Lonely Heart

"The Remains of the Day," now playing at the Americom House of Cinema, sketches a portrait of a man who, in devoted service to his master, has lost himself.


Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel of the same name, this eloquent and poignant film unfolds, through recollection, as an aging butler motors through the English west country in hope of making up for lost opportunities with a woman he loves. Through all his years of service alongside this love -- the housekeeper, Miss Kenton -- the butler, Stevens, never allowed himself to acknowledge his feelings. Duty always came first.


In the style typical of masterful director James Ivory and co-producer Ismail Merchant, the story unfolds at a pensive pace.


Anthony Hopkins plays the aging Stevens with subtle intonation. As Miss Kenton, Emma Thompson creates a passionate character who nonetheless keeps her place, running Darlington Hall like a clock, while herself becoming increasingly tightly wound over the butler's unresponsiveness. Hopkins and Thompson deliver performances of delicious understatement that keep the otherwise slow-moving plot full of tension.


The film is a careful study of a man who has trained all emotion out of himself to be of service to his employer, Lord Darlington, a Nazi appeaser and anti-Semite. Hopkins, his character and countenance honed to near expressionless, so as not to offend, not only does not notice that Darlington is engaging in a corrupt deal with the Germans during the early 1930s, but also does not care.


The professional facade he has mastered is his undoing, for he has erased emotion so thoroughly that he fails to notice that Miss Kenton is in love with him, and only cares when it is too late.


Stevens' character is revealed in a number of scenes exquisitely played by Thompson and Hopkins: Miss Kenton finds Stevens reading a silly romance that shows he is human, after all, and the butler reacts with understated embarrassment. Finally losing hope of a response from Stevens, the housekeeper gives him her notice and announces her plans to marry -- to which Stevens responds with controlled platitudes.


Most telling is the scene in which Stevens' father dies upstairs while a historic international conference is taking place downstairs. Unswerving, impenetrable and with the appropriate pomp and circumstance, Stevens spends his father's last hours serving at the conference.


"The Remains of the Day" is exquisitely filmed, masterfully edited, and delivered with the usual finesse of Merchant-Ivory films.


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Also playing is the taut and entertaining film version of John Grisham's bestseller "The Client."


The plot puts an 11-year-old at the center of a search for a buried body. The question is who will get there first -- the FBI or the Mob? And will the kid manage to live through it?Brad Renfro, as the boy, is the picture of mouthy precociousness as he tries to outsmart both the law and the outlaws.


Susan Sarandon, who plays his bleeding-heart, mother-hen lawyer, delivers a convincing performance, complete with Southern accent.


Tommy Lee Jones plays Roy Foltrigg, the Louisiana district attorney who wants to get elected to the governorship, in fitting good-old-boy style.





"The Remains of the Day" can be seen nightly at 6:30 P.M. "The Client" plays every night at 9 P.M., with added showings Saturday and Sunday at 4 P.M. Both movies run through Sunday, Christmas day. No shows Friday and no 9 P.M. show Saturday. Admission is 25,000 rubles for each film.