SYNOPSIS: The times they are a-changin’ at Downton Abbey. Old-fashioned traditions clash with newfangled progress at the Edwardian country house as the upper crust Crawley family cope with a changing world. “Our lives are lived in chapters,” says cook Beryl Patmore (Lesley Nicol), “and there’s nothing wrong when a chapter ends.”
CAST: Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Paul Giamatti, Elizabeth McGovern, Penelope Wilton, Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon Russell Beale and Arty Froushan. Directed by Simon Curtis.
REVIEW: At Downton Abbey, that bastion of old-world tradition, change in the air. And if you don’t realize that by following along with the story, don’t worry, the characters will remind you, again and again, with wise one-liners.
It’s 1930, and the world is changing. Dinner for three at the New Ivy restaurant costs an outrageous 10 pounds—“The last time I ate there,” says Noel Coward (Arty Froushan), “I asked for the bill and a pistol.”—but in high society the very mention of the word divorce can still stop a fancy dress ball cold.
As the world turns, the Crawley family, led by Robert Crawley, 7th Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), are feeling the winds of change blowing at their backs.
Lord Grantham is reluctant to let the old ways fall by the wayside, but his daughter Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) divorce has brought scandal to the family name and ongoing financial problems may mean the end of years of tradition at their beloved home, Downton Abbey.
A melodrama in fancy dress, “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” is pure fan service. It’s all about change, a theme hammered home with the subtlety of a cup of Earl Grey spiked with absinthe, but series creator and writer Julian Fellowes is far too canny to change the dynamic that made the television show and the subsequent movies—”Downton Abbey” (2019) and “Downton Abbey: A New Era” (2022)—popular.
The final chapter brings with it favorite characters, like butler Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), lady’s maid Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) and widower Tom Branson (Allen Leech) among many others from upstairs and down. Even the Dowager Countess, memorably played by the late Maggie Smith, is a formidable presence despite having passed away in the previous film.
There are no huge surprises, and it’s all rather predictable, but Fellowes and director Simon Curtis aren’t here to turn the franchise on its head. Instead, they deliver a sentimental swansong that allows longtime fans to spend a few extra hours with beloved characters padding around the opulent rooms, and downstairs kitchen, of one of England’s most famous homes.
Sure, it’s a bit self-congratulatory—the theme music swells as an audience enthusiastically applauds the title card filling the screen in the film’s opening minutes—a montage near the end feels more spectral than sincerely heartfelt, and there are easter eggs galore, but somehow the self-indulgence seems like the right choice to tell a story about a family for whom self-indulgence is a way of life.
The title, “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” promises a moving-forward of the big screen adventures of the aristocratic Crawley family. Fans want more story, but progress? That’s something else.
The popular television series and 2019 film delivered a preserved-in-amber glimpse at melodramatic “Upstairs, Downstairs” classism mixed with some laughs, a touch of sentimentality and expertly delivered barbs from Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess. Fans embraced the illusion of high-mindedness and the fantasy of life at the mansion.
For enthusiasts, a return to Downtown is a creature comfort, like a cup of hot tea with a warm crumpet. You don’t have it often, but when you do, you want it to taste exactly the same as it always has. The presentation can be tweaked, but the essence must be untouched.
Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellows, seem to understand what fans expect, and deliver. It may be predictable, but narrative complacency is part of its appeal for folks who spent six seasons on television getting to know these characters.
The story begins in 1929 as the Dowager Countess of Grantham inherits a beautiful villa on the Cotes d’Azur from a long-ago admirer. The family, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), Lady Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Tom (Allen Leech), Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) and the ever-dutiful Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) pack up there best and head to the South of France. “They better be warned,” says Mr. Carson, “the British are coming.”
Once there, a mysterious locket appears to hold the key to a long-withheld family secret and a decades-old “idyllic interlude.”
Meanwhile back at Downton Abbey, an expensive roof repair convinces Lord Grantham to allow a film crew to shoot in the grand old mansion in return for a large rental fee. The downstairs workers are excited but Grantham’s enthusiasm is muted. “I think it’s a horrible idea,” he snorts. “Actresses plastered in make-up and actors just plastered.” Still, the roof is leaking and soon the house’s grand rooms are overrun by a film crew, including director Jack Barber (Hugh Danccy) and his stars, matinee idol Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and the glamorous Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock). “We got through the war,” groans the Dowager Countess. “We can get through this.”
Later in the film the Dowager Countess says that life is about “getting past the unexpected.” That may apply to life at the Abbey, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the movie because there is nothing unexpected about anything that happens in the film’s two-hour running time. A better title may have been “Downton Abbey: Fan Service,” because it is a crowd-pleasing slow simmering stew of favorite ingredients, with no extra spice or flavorings. It is what the fans expect, no more but sometimes less.
“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is a plucky, stiff upper lipped movie meant for devotees who will likely excuse the filmmaking, which is as dry as a day-old scone at tea time.
You get a lot of movie for your dollar in “Woman in Gold.” Two movies in fact.
The framing device is the true story of Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), an Austrian Holocaust survivor who enlists the help of young lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings, including one of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Looted by Nazis at the outset of WWII the iconic artwork—it’s referred to as the “Mona Lisa of Austria” in the film—had hung in the state gallery for five decades. The years-long case wound its way slowly through the courts until it reached the Supreme Court of the United States and then binding arbitration by a panel of three Austrian judges.
Running parallel is the harrowing story of the Bloch-Bauer and Altmanns, rich Jewish families torn apart by the Nazi occupation of Austria. Young Maria (Tatiana Maslany) is a beautiful new bride forced to leave her mother, father and extended family and make the dangerous journey to a new life in to America to avoid the concentration camps.
It’s two thrillers, one legal, one humanistic, mixed and matched to form a whole but “Woman in Gold” isn’t strictly a movie about a lawsuit or Holocaust horror, it’s really a story about the power of memories and heritage.
Despite frequent flashbacks director Simon “My Week with Marilyn” Curtis delivers a straightforward retelling of this true story. Occasionally it feels a tad too straightforward but Mirren gives Maria a wistful, powerful spirit that provides the emotional underpinning to propel the stories forward. It is the sometimes pained, sometimes joyful looks that cross her face as she remembers her long gone family that makes the story compelling, not the legalese or Reynolds’s lawyer character. On Mirren’s face is the story, a vision of loss and anguish, but tempered with a tale of determination.
As a thriller “Woman in Gold” occasionally feels conventional but the performance of its lead actress is anything but.
Woman in Gold is director Simon Curtis’s follow up to the Academy Award nominated film My Week with Marilyn. His first feature chronicled seven days in the life of Marilyn Monroe during the production of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl.
In the new movie Dame Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann, an Austrian Holocaust survivor who enlists the help of young lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings, including one of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Looted by Nazis at the outset of WWII the iconic artwork—it’s referred to as the “Mona Lisa of Austria” in the film—had hung in the state gallery for five decades. The years-long case wound its way slowly through the courts until it reached the Supreme Court of the United States and then binding arbitration by a panel of three Austrian judges.
He spent a week with Marilyn, the director teases, but years with Maria.
Altmann’s story first grabbed his interest when he saw a BBC Imagine documentary on her struggle to reclaim the artworks that were rightfully hers. He was taken with the character of Maria, who reminded him of many people he grew up with. “I’m from a Jewish family in London,” he says, “and I met many women like Maria.”
The resulting film plays like two thrillers, the present day legal story and the backstory, told in flashbacks.
One is a procedural, one a horrifying look at the rise of Nazism in Austria, mixed and matched to form a whole but “Woman in Gold” isn’t strictly a movie about a lawsuit or Holocaust horror, it’s really a story about the power of memories and heritage.
Curtis says the casting of Mirren was crucial to the success of the film. He needed an actress of a certain age and one who could portray the emotional range of a woman trapped between her real world pain and the memories she holds dear. On Mirren’s face is the story, a vision of loss and anguish, but tempered with a tale of determination.
Curtis first met Mirren almost thirty years ago when he assistant directed a production of Measure for Measure in 1979. He remembers her as a formidable force and jokingly calls himself “her tea boy.”
“I sat with her in the kitchen and helped her answer fan mail and boiled water for tea,” he says. “I did essentially the same job on this film.”
