Criterion Close-Up – Episode 22 – A Room with a View

Author: Aaron West
Published: Mon 04 Jan 2016
Episode Link: https://feeds.criterioncast.com/link/22328/13728528/criterion-close-up-episode-22-a-room-with-a-view

Mark and Aaron start the New Year as members of CriterionCast, and jump into the world of Merchant Ivory’s A Room with a View. With such a lavish, large production with quite an ensemble of characters, there is a lot to say. We discuss the social constraints placed upon the characters, and how some groups have opposing world views that resemble traditional versus modernity, while also touching on the nature of wealth, class, and even gender. We also enjoy discussing how the film surprisingly works as a dry comedy, and we are pleased to have Merchant & Ivory back in print in the Criterion Collection.

About the film:

Merchant Ivory Productions, led by director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, became a household name with A Room with a View, the first of their extraordinary adaptations of E. M. Forster novels. A cherubic nineteen-year-old Helena Bonham Carter plays Lucy Honeychurch, a young, independent- minded, upper-class Edwardian woman who is trying to sort out her burgeoning romantic feelings, divided between an enigmatic free spirit (Julian Sands) she meets on vacation in Florence and the priggish bookworm (Daniel Day-Lewis) to whom she becomes engaged back in the more corseted Surrey. Funny, sexy, and sophisticated, this gargantuan art-house hit features a sublime supporting cast–including

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