Saturday, May 29, 2004 (Saturday) Sunny
I watched a wonderful film, "Remains Of The Day" adapted from a novel by the Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, translated as "Long Days Remains", or "Farewell to You Tian".
The masterpiece of the British domestic servant culture film is gentle, restrained, beautiful, and unaware. It has a sense of tragedy like "just lost at the time". There were many nominations for the Oscars that year, but unfortunately it was the golden age of film history. "Schindler's List", "Philadelphia Story" and "The Pianist" were all released that year, and it had to return empty-handed. In fact, compared with "Gosford Manor", "Long Days Stay" has a more enjoyable and plain approach, far better than the latter's botched suspense foreshadowing.
A good British movie is reluctant to watch it all at once, such as holding a long scroll in hand, just hoping that it will be unfolded endlessly.
Don’t even think about popcorn.
Emma Thompson really deserves the award. She and Anthony Hopkins’ previous "Howard Manor" was also directed by the film’s director James Ivory. It also explores the impact of reason and passion on life-this can be It's really an important issue of British culture. The two sisters in "Sense and Passion" are both rational and passionate, but they are both happy. The servant chief and the housekeeper who love each other in "Long Day Left a Trace" "have hatred for an endless period of time" because they are too rational and self-restrained. The two sisters in "Howard Manor" share the same reason and passion (as in "Sense and Passion", the sensible one is still played by Emma Thompson), but they both have life without regrets.
The chief servant Stevens, played by Anthony Hopkins, is really a model of "self-denial". When his father died, he could still serve guests casually, pour wine, and hurriedly call the doctor who came to see the deceased to treat a guest. The man’s feet blistered because the shoes were too small. There may be an overly indifferent factor in British culture, but I always feel that this kind of self-suppression of human nature would not have been so extreme without the nationality of the original author of the novel.
Stephens had to be a small person all his life. Apart from knowing how to polish silverware, the norms of tableware, and how to iron newspapers, he had no knowledge, insights, and enthusiasm for the world. His life is like the pigeon trapped in the dusty room at the end of the film, hovering up and down, but can't fly out. It was heartbreaking that he talked about it in an unfamiliar country tavern. Perhaps he didn't realize that it was an ideal self that he had never had a chance to achieve.
I pressed the fast forward button to skip this paragraph.
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