‘Merchant Ivory’ Remembers the Duo Who Resuscitated Costume Dramas (original) (raw)
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In this conventional documentary, the filmmaking pair get their due as forward-thinkers within lush, period settings.
Ismail Merchant, left, and James Ivory in the documentary.Credit...Cohen Media Group
Aug. 30, 2024
Merchant Ivory
Directed by Stephen Soucy
Documentary
Not Rated
1h 52m
“Merchant Ivory” (in theaters; directed by Stephen Soucy), is fairly conventional, as documentaries about filmmakers go.
There are contemporary and archival comments from actors and crew members who worked with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, the celebrated director and producer who formed the production banner that lends the documentary its name. Among other accomplishments, the pair revitalized the costume drama with their lush, complex literary adaptations. In the documentary, clips from their films illustrate and illuminate the stories told by a vibrant array of interviewees. Photographs from sets and from history appear onscreen, the camera softly zooming and panning across them to add movement. Occasional voice-over from Soucy fills in some details. You’ve seen this kind of workmanlike movie before.
It also feels a bit flat next to this year’s “ Made in England, ” a more personal film about another filmmaking duo, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. But the accomplishments of Ivory and Merchant, along with the stories about them, still make this one worth watching. Among those speaking on camera are the costume designers John Bright and Jenny Beavan, whose work on “A Room With a View” won them their first Oscar, in 1987, and the actors Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. Ivory, 96, also talks candidly throughout about his own work and his relationship with Merchant (who died in 2005).
“Merchant Ivory” proceeds more or less in chronological order. There’s plenty of rumination on their biggest hits — which includes “A Room With a View,” “The Remains of the Day” and “Howards End” — as well as lesser-known films and the social circle around the pair. Yet within the timeline, it branches out, exploring topics that demonstrate just how forward-thinking Merchant and Ivory were, and how remarkable it is that they managed to make their meticulous, sumptuous movies. There’s a lengthy discussion of Merchant’s almost magical ability to produce films on extremely tight budgets. (Ivory wryly remarks that “you have to be a con man to be a successful film producer.”)
More important and radically, the film explores groundbreaking depictions of the inner lives of gay men in several Merchant Ivory films. Similarly, the filmmakers were interested in pulling costume dramas out of fusty, shallow stasis and into rich, emotionally resonant territory.
All of this left me with both a renewed appreciation for the innovation of Merchant, Ivory and their collaborators, and a familiar feeling often provoked by biographical films. Like many documentaries of this sort, “Merchant Ivory” opts to be a survey without a thesis — informative, even engaging, but lacking an argument that might drive the documentary itself forward. It’s a choice, to be sure; the aim here is to cram in as much information as possible. But I did find myself wishing that “Merchant Ivory” was made with some of the same outside-the-box craft that its subjects had employed.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section
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of the New York edition
with the headline:
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