The films produced by Ismail Merchant and directed by James Ivory – ranging from 1985’s “A Room with a View” to “Remains of the Day” (1993) – were sometimes dismissed as “pretty but anodyne period drama”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail: Alan Parker referred to them as the “Laura Ashley school of filmmaking”.
But this “splendid” documentary “reminds us that they were anything but”. It’s a “long-overdue appreciation not just of the two men who gave their names to what more or less became a cinematic genre, but also to the other two people vital to their success: writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins”. Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave and Hugh Grant are among those who pop up to describe what it was like being in a Merchant Ivory film, and Ivory himself, now 96, contributes too (Merchant died in 2005). The film also delves into the story of their relationship (they were partners in real life, but had other lovers).
“As documentaries about filmmakers go”, this one is “fairly conventional”, featuring the usual mix of archival material, clips from films, and interviews, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. Along the way, we hear about Merchant’s “almost magical ability to produce films on extremely tight budgets” (he was a man, says Anthony Hopkins, who could “charm the birds out of the trees”). More radically, the film explores the “groundbreaking” way in which their films explored the lives of gay men. It’s just a pity the documentary was not made with more verve.
It isn’t likely to “win over many converts” to the pair’s films, said David Parkinson in Radio Times, but it’s “brisk, gossipy and insightful”, and is sure to “delight fans” of these “deceptively acute pictures”.