Merchant Ivory

Film: Howards End
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Ah, Merchant/Ivory. You know what you’re getting with a Merchant/Ivory picture, which means I knew exactly what I was signing up for with Howards End. One a slightly more positive note for me, at least this particular period drama is one that takes place in the 20th century rather than the 19th or earlier. I don’t dislike period dramas in general, but Merchant/Ivory fare tends to be along the line of Eddie Izzard’s spoof of British films involving people named Sebastian rearranging matches and having stilted conversations of half sentences. There’s almost a prudishness to their style, as if the height of romance were longing glances and pining.

Howards End has some of those traits, but it’s also an interesting social commentary. It is a treatise on social class and changing social roles in Edwardian England. It does this by contrasting the various fortunes and social mixings of three families. The first is the Schlegels who, despite their partly-German ancestry, are British to the core. They are a monied family deep with tradition. The Wilcox family are new money and extremely concerned with social rank in the main because they have only recently attained the sort of wealth that affords them such privilege. The third family is the Basts, who are poor but ambitious.