Few filmmakers merged the personal and professional as gracefully as producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. Their partnership ushered in the Golden Age of art-house cinema in the mid-1980s, and while they did more than costume dramas, it's those works that they are most most closely identified with, such as A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, and their crowning achievement, Remains of the Day. Their pairing was accentuated by the invaluable contributions of both screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who won two Oscars for her adaptations) and minimalist composer Richard Robbins. Their films were frequently celebrated by critics, audiences and givers of awards, and during my time discovering their works, I was introduced to actors like Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Julian Sands, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves, and Simon Callow, among many others.
Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Stephen Soucy, Merchant Ivory details the collaborative artistic endeavors (there were 41 films in total, a handful of which were directed by Merchant) and explores how their less-than-secret, off-screen romantic partnership was the fuel that kept all things going. To both, the films were the most important part of their collaborative efforts, even if the personal life suffered as a result. The film is anchored by a frank series of interviews with Ivory, as well as numerous archival talks with Merchant and new interviews with many of the actors and other frequent technical collaborators.
But in the end (and quite humorously), the stories all end up sounding somewhat similar: Merchant would frequently start productions with no money and once money did start coming in, payments were slow to arrive. Someone refers to the group of creatives as a “wandering company,” and while in the moment, things felt stressful and left everyone filled with anxiety, the stories told today are like those of people who had survived some great battle.
Merchant (raised in India) and Ivory (from the west coast of America) became great partners because they were so different and handled day-to-day work quite differently, with the director being eternally calm and friendly and the producer being in film huckster mode as he pulled cash out of the proverbial stones and somehow always found a way to get things done. The film looks at some of their earlier (pre-Room with a View) works made in India, England and the United States, as well as their big-studio efforts (Jefferson in Paris, Surviving Picasso, The Golden Bowl) in the last years of their production company’s existence. Most of these films were not received well, but a re-examination of them in more recent years has yielded change of hearts among many.
Oddly enough, the film Ivory finally won an Oscar for (Call Me By Your Name) wasn’t a Merchant Ivory production at all, nor did he direct it (he won for Best Adapted Screenplay), and he counters the healthy father-son relationship in that film with the decidedly less healthy one he had with his own father. Merchant Ivory wouldn’t be nearly as engaging or insightful a movie without Ivory’s considered and articulate look back into his entire life, up until the present, and like any great documentary about filmmakers, it triggered an immediate desire to rewatch so many of these films. Mission: Accomplished.
The film is now playing exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
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