Julian Fellowes

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA: harmless enough

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Photo caption: Hugh Bonneville in DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA. Courtesy of Focus Features.

In Downton Abbey: A New Era, writer Julian Fellowes adds a chapter to the saga of the characters he created in the beloved television series. It follows the 2019 movie Downton Abbey which I liked and thought had wrapped up all the story lines. But, apparently, there was more wrapping up to do, and Downton Abbey: A New Era begins with a wedding, ends with a funeral and a birth, and constitutes a fitting farewell to Maggie Smith’s unforgettable Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

The trailer is misleading, and suggests a fish-out-of-water romp with the most English of aristocrats and servants visiting France. Some characters do go to France, but they uncover a dramatic mystery that goes to the roots of the family’s identity. While they are gone, Lady Mary rents the Great House to a movie studio as a set, just as silent films are being replaced by the talkies; the predictable culture clash ensues.

This time, Hugh Bonneville gets to showcase his acting chops. Usually his Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, stands around in stiff correctness, placidly content with the old ways and irritated by any modernity, while smarter female relatives and servants manage up. In Downton Abbey: A New Era, he experiences the strongest emotions, and his fear of loss illuminates what really means the most to him.

To appreciate what his lordship faces in France, it bears remembering that the very first two episodes of Downton Abbey revolved around that most arcane rule of heredity, that of the entailment of estates. As they obsessed over breaking the entail, the characters seemed dressed for the 1900s, but with their feet firmly planted in the 13th century. Here is the best explanation of hereditary property laws and their original rationale.

On a lighter note, I must observe that the inept Molesley (Kevin Doyle), whose innocent earnestness led him into the most spectacular faux pas, has grown into the series’ funniest character not named Violet.

Maggie Smith in DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA, Courtesy of Focus Features.

We do get to enjoy a dose of Maggie Smith’s wonderful Violet. The cast does well in general, and Dominic West is great fun as silent film star Guy Dexter.

The one thing I disliked in the film is admittedly an Inside Baseball complaint. The character of the French aristocrat’s mother is one-dimensional and never evolves. That doesn’t bother me, but this stiff, underwritten minor character is played by Nathalie Baye, who is France’s greatest screen actress. (think Meryl Streep level). It’s a waste of Baye’s time and talent.

Director Simon Curtis doesn’t waste a second letting the camera linger on something that doesn’t move the plot; some of the transtions are abrupt, but at least the movie doesn’t drag. Curtis is a prolific TV director who has only directed five feature films (one of them being the very good My Week with Marilyn).

If you’re not already a Downton Abbey fan, there isn’t anything much in this movie for you. But if you are a Downton Abbey fan, it will be entertaining. Downton Abbey: A New Era is now in theaters.

DOWNTON ABBEY: wrapping up a beloved series

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Carson (Jim Carter) returns in DOWNTON ABBEY

Downton Abby is writer Julian Fellowes’ satisfying wrap-up of the beloved series. So how good is it? It’s well-crafted and brings a hopeful, romantic and sentimental conclusion to virtually every character in the series.

It’s now 1927, and the aristocratic Crawley family and the Downton Abbey staff must host a visit from the King and Queen on short notice. There are two sources of conflict. Upstairs, there is a question of inheritance, which is where the series began, and which introduces a new character (played by the great Imelda Staunton) to do social combat with Violet (Maggie Smith). Downstairs, the royal family has a traveling squad of servants who try to humiliatingly push aside the Downton staff for the visit.

Fellowes gets credit for creating the marvelous character of Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. The delightfully unfiltered Violet has allowed Maggie Smith to scene-steal for a decade, and she returns with her cutting bon mots and appalled reaction to modernity.

There is one shark-jumping scene, an action thriller sequence that isn’t really necessary for the story. It serves to make a point about the character of Tom, but that point could have ben made without the Jack Ryan moment.

Downton Abbey is not really a stand-alone movie. If you haven’t watched the series, it won’t mean as much. This is a series finale – it’s just in theaters instead of on TV

This is not The Sopranos, Throne of Blood or Tales of the City. Pretty much all Downtown Abbey fans will feel good about where the story concludes.

THE CHAPERONE: deeper than it looks

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Elizabeth McGovern in THE CHAPERONE

The Chaperone is a pleasing period tale of self-discovery in 1921 America. Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) is not yet the silent movie sex symbol that she would become; she’s a 15-year-old from Wichita who has a wonderful opportunity – she can attend a cutting edge NYC dance school, if only she can get a chaperone. Local Wichita matron Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) volunteers to be that chaperone. Highly spirited and supremely confident, Louise is a Wild Child who can shock Norma’s sensibilities. But we learn that Norma has a secret reason for leaving Wichita and another secret reason to visit New York City…

This could have been a standard Odd Couple-type romp, but it’s surprisingly deeper. That’s because it centers on the adult character of Norma and benefits from McGovern’s performance. She has a sense of decorum, but she’s not a garden-variety prude. She doesn’t really appreciate her own inner strength and what that strength has helped her survive already. Now, for the first time, she reflects on what it would take to achieve happiness for herself.

Of course, adoptees longing to find out about their biological parents, child sexual abuse, closeted homosexuality and passionless marriages all existed in 1921, but American society was ill-equipped to deal with (or even acknowledge) them. Those are the pivot points in this screenplay written by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes.

Richardson’s persona as Louise does not resemble the sensuous adult Brooks, but she captures the youthful exuberance and confidence of the role. This is only the second American film for Hungarian actor Géza Röhri (from the brilliant but impossibly grim Son of Saul). Röhri is able to project a fundamental decency that is very appealing.

The Chaperone is a satisfying and easy watch, which I would expect to end up on PBS after its theatrical run. The Chaperone played at Cinequest in March.

DVD/Stream of the week: the orginal Downton Abbey

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Fans of Downton Abbey – do not despair because Season 3 has run its course.   Before he created Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes wrote the 2001 film Gosford Park, also set at the estate of an English aristocrat in the 1920s. The period between the world wars marked the final decline of the Upstairs Downstairs world, and Fellowes, descended from such an upper class family, grew up with relatives who had lived through it.  In fact, he modeled the scathingly dismissive character of Constance, Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith), after his own great-aunt.

Gosford Park won an Oscar for its legendary director, Robert Altman.  Altman was a master of weaving together characters and multiple story lines, employing the kind of simultaneous, overlapping speech that people use in real life.  In Gosford Park, instead of recording all the actors with the normal boom microphone, he placed radio microphones on each of twenty actors in the large scenes.  The result, a triumph of cinematic sound design, is that we can hear key lines of dialogue amidst the realistic cacophony of a large gathering, and our attention can move from group to group within a single camera shot.

Ever unconventional, Altman also showed his genius in the solitary scenes.  In one, Helen Mirren’s character has repaired to her own room to reflect on an emotionally shattering development.  Instead of a closeup on Mirren’s face, Altman shoots in long shot, allowing Mirren to act with her whole body and emphasizing the loneliness of her life and the situation.

Altman was also known for attracting very deep, top rate casts.  Gosford Park contains exceptional performances by Mirren, Kelly Macdonald and Emily Watson.  Watson has an outburst at a formal dinner that leaves the audience gasping.  American audiences had only seen Clive Owen in the modest art house film Croupier, and the brooding determination in his Gosford Park performance helped make him a star.

As in Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith gets some great lines and makes the most of them.  Her performance triggered a stream of spunky roles for Smith, including in the Harry Potter movies, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet and, of course, as Downton Abbey’s Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Gosford Park is a great movie, and you’ll recognize its world as Downton Abbey’s.  Gosford Park is available on DVD and streaming from Netflix Instant.