Howards End by E.M. Forster - Classic English Novel | Family Saga & Social Commentary | Perfect for Book Clubs & Literature Lovers

THE BLU-RAY: The deluxe blu-ray has just about anything one could want. This is the 25th Anniversary Restoration resulting in a perfect picture with true color. The 25-page booklet contains color stills from the film and notes by James Ivory, critic John Pym and production designer Luciana Arrighi. Extras include a 42 minute documentary, two 30 minute interviews with James Ivory and much more. You’ll learn a lot, including how the film almost wasn’t released. One thing I would have liked to see is some of the deleted scenes, as “Howard’s End” was 3 ½ hours in its first cut then cut to 2 ½ for a more realistic running time. Surely some of that would be interesting.THE FILM: The team of Ismail Merchant (producer), James Ivory (director) and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (screenwriter) were at their peak in the early 90's and “Howard's End” is their masterpiece. It is a thoughtful, detailed, superlative film in every way including direction, script, acting, cinematography, set design and score. It won Oscars for its adapted screenplay and art decoration and Emma Thompson won best actress. It is one of the most successful adaptations of a classic novel (E.M. Forster wrote it from 1908-1910) and was their third film based on a Forster novel and significantly helped revive interest in him.The film is very complex and nuanced, offering many ways to see it and is even more rewarding with multiple viewings. It follows the book very closely though of course it must be condensed and is almost two and a half hours long, even so. No film can really quite be the book and criticism that follows that line is amiss unless a film somehow misunderstands or twists the book's meaning. This is absolutely not the case with “Howard's End”. All of Forster's concerns are there though without being able to show the interior thoughts of characters (thankfully the clumsiness of voice-overs is avoided) the motivation of some characters, particularly Margaret, can be hard to discern, especially on first-viewing.Though presented with quite a few major characters, Howard's End is not hard to follow as they sort themselves into three families. The meeting, gradual intertwining and end result are the essence of the film. The families each represent different aspects of English society in the Edwardian Era. There were other classes, of course, but Forster left out the aristocracy, working class and the truly poor. I think he saw them as static and saw England's future being created by the groups he chose. Both the Schlegel's and the Wilcox's are upper middle class, though different aspects of it. It is important to note that the Wilcox's, though vastly wealthy, are not members of the nobility, have no titles and would not mix with the actual aristocracy. The Industrial Revolution had been going on for over a century now and the Wilcox's were part of a new moneyed class of considerable wealth that rose as the years progressed. Henry is a successful businessman. The Schlegal's are wealthy and comfortable from inheritance, just not on the scale of the Wilcox's. None of the Schlegals work and they spend their time in cultural pursuits. Whensocial complications arise, Helen can always go to Hamburg for a few weeks. The Basts aren't of the poor, at least at first, and Leonard Bast is not in the working class but on the lowest rung of the middle-class as he has a white collar job with the Porphyrion Insurance Co. as a clerk.The families also are symbolically different from each other. The Wilcox's are pragmatic, interested in money and commerce, old-fashioned, conservative and "solid". They were disruptive to the previous status quo as industrial fortunes were far greater than those of most of the landed aristocracy. The Schlegel's, half-German, are interested in high culture, art, music, literature, and in the issues of the day. They are liberal, supporting women's suffrage and might possibly be interested in Theosophy, socialism and Impressionist music, all popular with the Bloomsbury crowd then. The Schlegel's are all about the inner life, the Wilcox's, the outer. This goes back and forth throughout the film. Leonard Bast is striving to better himself through education and culture and this enables him to communicate across the class gap with the Schlegal's.There are differences within the families as well. The Schlegels, Margaret (Emma Thompson) and Helen (Helena Bonham Carter) are rather like Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in “Sense and Sensibility”. Helen is all passion, impulse and prone to drama while Margaret is more realistic, steady and intellectual. She also knows just what to do to restore harmony in difficult social situations. It's Margaret who gradually realizes that all her family's ideals and culture only exist because they have money, though the film could have brought this out more clearly. Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) is a very complex character. The first time I saw the film I thought (rather like Helen) that he was an ogre, but on later viewings saw that he was an essentially good man within his narrow view of the world. Hemmed in by social and class rules, a Victoriaian in an Edwardian world, he is nevertheless perceptive, a good judge of character and essentially fair, though emotionally remote. He knows that Margaret has no idea of his wife’s “whim” about Howard’s End and counters his children’s opinion. Both he and Margaret are intelligent and exceptional people and it’s this that they recognize in each other that forms the basis of their attraction.Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) is rather more like the Schlegel's than the Wilcox's, but without the education. She's an intuitively intelligent woman, loving and kind, and rather spiritual. Howard's End is the farmhouse where she grew up and she has an intimate connection to it. When we finally see it, it is the embodiment of the English countryside with its wisteria and enormous chestnut tree in full bloom. She understands that while to the rest of her family it’s just a piece of property, Margaret really understands its true worth. She’s more the old world than the new. Her comments about mothers ending war pleases Margaret’s friends but she breaks up the luncheon when she says she’s only too glad not to have to vote. Tibby Schlegel (Adrian Ross Magenty) and Charles Wilcox (James Wilby) seem to have inherited the worst parts of their respective families.All of this is set in an incredible re-creation of Edwardian London with the usual Merchant-Ivory attention to detail. Just the Edwardian department store at Christmas, filmed at Fortnum & Mason, is absolutely amazing and it's almost just a walk-through. It’s more than that though, as it illustrates something new. The department store was a new opportunity for women to get out of the house and respectably socialize in public - a newfound freedom. The Schlegel’s Wickham Place flat’s interior is all artwork and floral arrangements. books and a profusion of artistically-considered objects. The Wilcox's imperially rent posh flats and buy stately homes almost thoughtlessly. When Margaret visits Oniton Grange in Shropshire for Charles and Dolly's wedding she thinks it's the ancestral family home, especially when she sees the portrait paintings on the walls. But Henry tells her he just bought the place “lock, stock and barrel, no doubt from some aristocrat who couldn't keep it up anymore. Times were changing. The cinematography,by Tony Roberts is well-considered and beautiful.A note also must be made of Richard Robbins wonderful counterintuitive score. A lesser film-score composer might have done a romantic score or perhaps imitated the English Pastoral school and there are moments like that, especially in passages with woodwinds. But most of the score is a minimalist treatment with fragments of themes building on each other and even a few moments of Indonesian gamelan influence. It works perfectly nonetheless. It also incorporates a tango, a waltz and a bit of Percy Grainger and is a joy to listen to on its own. Within the film it’s used sparingly but effectively, especially late in the film when it seems to illustrate the workings of invisible forces; the use of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5, at that time thought of as his “Fate Symphony” also hints at a sort of fatalism here. Robbins should have won the Oscar for this unique score but lost to Disney's “Aladdin” which is a musical song score that shouldn't have been in the same category.The beauty of this film and others like it, like the various Austen adaptations (now called "Heritage Films") brought the only negative criticisms. Some critics seem to want gritty social realism in all films and think these historical films set in the middle or upper classes in attractive surroundings are a kind of fantasy world for viewers to escape to. But this is not just a “pretty film”. Do not be fooled by the lush surroundings. “Howard’s End” deals with serious matters that get only more so as it progresses. Forget the criticisms and enjoy this superlative film.