A Room with a View (1986)

After watching A Room with a View, nominated for Best Picture of 1986, you can never hear "O mio babbino caro" without recalling this romantic film. It's such an integral part of my experience with this movie that I cannot truly picture most of the images from it without hearing the song playing in my head. And there are many beautiful images from this film. It's one of the best movies made by the collaboration between director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Add to that mix the source of the film, the lovely novel by E.M. Forster, and you have one of the greatest achievements of the 1980s.

Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith, in an exquisitely detailed performance) is accompanying her cousin Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) as chaperon on a tour of Italy. They are newly arrived, and they are unhappy with the rooms they have been assigned in the pensione. It seems that they were promised a view from their windows, but Charlotte, in particular, is unsatisfied--in more ways than one, the film suggests. A fellow English tourist, Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliott), overhears their complaints and offers them the rooms he and his son George (Julian Sands) have. After much flustering embarrassment on Charlotte's part, the Rev. Beebe (Simon Callow) volunteers to act as intermediary. Crisis averted, at least for now, without Charlotte feeling a sense of obligation to a strange man.

What actually happens, of course, is that Charlotte and Lucy now come into repeated contact with the Emersons. The Emersons are rather free thinking compared to people like Charlotte, who always prides herself on being a model of propriety. After accidentally witnessing a stabbing while she is walking on her own, Lucy faints and is carried to safety by George. He tells her afterward, "Something tremendous has happened," and it has, just not to the poor stabbing victim. George has become obviously enamored of Lucy, and when they are on a trip into the countryside, he surprises her by kissing her. Charlotte sees the kiss and yells for Lucy to stop. She realizes that she must quickly get Lucy back to the protection of the Honeychurch family in England.

Unfortunately, Lucy has a suitor back in England by the name of Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis in an early role quite unlike the ones he would later play), and to be polite, he's a bit too effete and snobbish for a girl who has just had her first taste of what romance and passion can truly be like. We know this because Lucy plays Beethoven in such a vigorous manner that everyone feels obliged to comment upon it. (There's a link there between piano playing and sexuality that the film hints at ever so slyly.) She's agreed to marry Cecil, but when the Emersons take possession of a nearby house, she starts to worry about whether or not she has made the right choice. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, Freddy Honeychurch (Rupert Graves) and George become good friends, and George begins visiting the Honeychurch home with regularity.

I'll try to avoid a lengthy discussion of the sequence involving George, Freddy, and the Rev. Beebe at the pond. It has to be one of the most prolonged scenes of full male nudity in contemporary non-pornographic film. Of course, Lucy, her mother, and Cecil accidentally cross paths with the naked bathers. It's an interesting moment in the film, a sort of encounter between the free-spirited and the repressed. I'm sure it's meant to be symbolic in the way that Mrs. Honeychurch and Cecil seem embarrassed but Lucy is intrigued.

Charlotte comes to visit the Honeychurchs and discovers that the Emersons are living nearby. She and Lucy talk about what happened in Italy, even moreso after Lucy discovers that Charlotte has told a novelist named Eleanor Lavish (Judi Dench mining comic gold in a small part) about the encounter between herself and George, and now it has become the subject of the writer's latest trashy romance novel. You know at that point that Lucy must confront her feelings for George and for Cecil, and she must make a decision as to which man she truly wishes to marry.

I love the use of intertitles throughout the film. They are the same as some of the chapter titles from Forster's book, and they bring a smile to my face each time I read them. Few modern films can carry off the use of this technique more associated with silent movies, but A Room with a View manages it. I also love the repeated use of the word "muddle," a word taken directly from the novel as well. Mr. Emerson says at the beginning of the film that George is in a middle; I take that to mean that George hasn't yet found his way. He hasn't decided yet what he wants in life. Later, Mr. Emerson uses the same word to describe Lucy's emotions. It's a clever choice of word, and it's a good decision on the part of the screenwriter to keep it.

I realize that most people find the so-called Merchant-Ivory films to be all about surface beauty, and I will readily admit that they are beautifully shot almost like a series of postcards. The light always seems to be perfect, and the details of costumes and sets and props are always immaculately handled. Yet, while it may seem that very little happens in films like A Room with a View, a great deal happens within the characters. True, the only physical contact between Lucy and George is a kiss or two, but it's the repercussions of those kisses that matter. Lucy has to make a decision, and we as viewers are privileged to see how she does. It's rare that films delve with thoughtful intelligence into the psychology of characters, but when they do, as in this film, they can provide moments of tremendous clarity and beauty.