Merchant Ivory

The second documentary in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Merchant Ivory and, as someone who absolutely loved their movies as a teen and young adult in the 1980s and 90s, I found it to be fascinating.  This is a very straightforward look at the professional and personal partnership between director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant and how they, along with regular collaborators screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, composer Richard Robbins, and costume designers Jenny Beavan and John Bright, revitalized the costume drama with some of the most acclaimed movies in cinematic history.  Despite being obsessed with A Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day, I didn't really know very much about the filmmakers who made them so I enjoyed the discussion about the yin-yang dynamic in their partnership with Ivory being calm, cool, collected, and dedicated to the purity of his artistic vision while Merchant was loud, bombastic, passionate, and determined to work faster and cheaper.  I also loved the discussion about how most of their movies have subversive themes about the hypocrisy found in polite society juxtaposed with gorgeous production design.  It was fun to see all of the behind the scenes stills and footage from my three favorites but it was also really interesting to learn about the difficulties in making their earlier movies (I now want to watch Shakespeare Wallah after learning that they only had enough film for one take in the final climactic scene) and to see how different perceptions impacted their later films, particularly with Jefferson in Paris.  My favorite aspect of this documentary is all of the contemporary interviews with many of the actors they worked with, especially Rupert Graves, James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Samuel West, Vanessa Redgrave (who is an absolute hoot), Emma Thompson, and Helena Bonham Carter.  A common theme in these interviews is how difficult it was to work on one of their movies because of the limited budget (at one point Merchant was catering the food for the cast and crew himself) but they were always lured back to make another one because of the final product.  I definitely enjoyed this and recommend it to fans of Merchant-Ivory movies.