THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

year: 1993

cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Peter Vaughan, Christopher Reeve

rating: ***

There's a funny/clever scene in Kevin Smith's CLERKS as the characters are debating whether the construction workers of the second Death Star (in STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI) were in cahoots with the Empire. After all, one guy points out, they're just hired labour. Does the same thing go for the butler of a Nazi sympathizer? He's just working there, right? This is an interesting film for about twenty-five minutes as we see the inner workings of the "help" in a British Mansion owned by Lord Darlington (James Fox), who, we learn - as the film progresses - is in cahoots with the Nazis (he wants England to deal with Germany on their terms, not fight them on England's). Anthony Hopkins, as the main character, plays the butler who remains (get it?) at Darlington's service no matter what kind of pro-German/anti-Jewish conversations arise during lunch or dinner. He's there to work, not pay attention. The audience isn't that lucky, having to be thrust into politics instead of learning more about the people the film is supposed to be about: how they work, what their lives are like - their ups, downs, and arounds. This entire pre-war main story is really a flashback - as the "present day" post-war story has Hopkins, now working for the mansion's new owner - an American dilpomat played by Christopher Reeve - going on a "vacation" to find Emma Thompson, who had worked alongside him. When they finally meet there's an awkward, dull conversation about the grand years before Lord Darlington sided with the Nazis... the only problem for the audience is: we didn't get to live in that world very long before the Nazi subplot, which much too quickly becomes the main plot, took over. The good old days meant very little since we only got a glimpse; and what REMAINS, as it were, are two characters remembering more than the audience ever got to experience.