Thursday, February 07, 2013

Remains of the Day

Remains of the Day is a 1989 film based on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel by the same name. I saw this when it first came out and thought it was one of the saddest movies I'd ever seen. A life wasted in pursuit of the trivial. The Younger Son had never seen it before, and it moved a bit slowly for him. I read the book back in 2003 and also enjoyed it.

trailer:



Rolling Stone says, "This love story between two people who never kiss or get beyond calling each other Mr. and Miss is suffused with regret but not self-pity." DVD Verdict says, "This is one of the top films of the last two decades. Dramatically powerful yet putting a smile on our lips from time to time, it features a top-notch cast in a picture with sparkling production values." EW gives it an A- and opens with this: "Ponderous, restrained, and achingly beautiful, The Remains of the Day has long been considered one of the very best of Merchant Ivory". Roger Ebert calls it "a subtle, thoughtful movie". Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 97%.

8 comments:

  1. This book is on my 1001 list and I haven't read it yet. I was surprised that this author wrote this and Never Let me go--a book about clones.

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    1. i read never let me go just recently. fascinating concept. i think it's interesting that nobody i know shelves it in the science fiction section. because most of his work is mainstream fiction that's where this gets shelved, too.

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  2. Anonymous7:19 AM

    I thought it was a good flick. Real emotion from what could be real people.
    -- A Pal

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    1. yes, the people did feel like they could be people who'd actually lived. people forget christopher reeve was in it, i think because they buy into the film's characters and forget the actors

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  3. This is a film I really liked. I should probably watch it again. I do recall liking the book even better though. I think I almost always like the book better than the film version of most work.

    Darla

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    1. i usually prefer the books, too. sometimes there's so much difference, though, that the 2 can't be fairly compared.

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  4. I loved this, I love anything with Emma Thompson in it. Probably Christopher Reeve would have had a whole different career if he hadn´t made Superman. He was a good character actor.

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    1. i agree about reeve's career. but he was so _perfect_ both as superman and kent. i wonder what his parts would've been as he got older if he hadn't had that terrible accident

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