For the last 10 years of my grandmother’s life, at any time when I might come over to go to she could be sitting in her little TV room, CNN on full blast and her big dog lying on the couch next to her. “How are you doing, Grandma?” I might ask.
And he or she would have a look at me and say with some disappointment, “Well, I’m still here.”
There are numerous moments in the brand new film “Downton Abbey: A Latest Era” where it appears as if the characters feel much the identical. “Downton Abbey” has all the time been a fairy tale a couple of group of individuals trapped in a world manufactured from rules and customs who slowly fight their method to joy. But after 52 episodes and one previous film, almost everyone has found their happily ever after. So why are they still here?
After 52 episodes and one previous film, almost everyone in ‘Downton Abbey’ has found their happily ever after. So why are they still here?
Mostly, it seems, to function midwives, therapists and fairy godparents to a complete other set of characters. There’s the gorgeous silent film star whose lower-class British accent threatens to wreck her profession with the rise of the talkies. There’s the elderly grieving French woman whose dead husband has inexplicably bestowed her beloved villa upon Lady Grantham. What unfolds is less costume drama and more “Touched by an Angel,” just with stiff upper lips and so many boiled vegetables.
To cite one other Maggie Smith film, “For individuals who like that type of thing, that’s the type of thing they like.” There are a number of moments when the show and characters we love are capable of shine through the clouds. When the ever-awkward Molesley suggests a latest ending for the Hollywood feature that’s being shot at Downton, his tackle what the scene might be grows almost incandescent with passion and imagination. For as bad as this film is (and it is rather bad; it’s “Sex and the City 2” bad), it’s nearly value going to simply to observe actor Kevin Doyle deliver this one shining monologue. You’ll be able to even see the awe on the opposite actors’ faces, as if they’re watching a rocket reach escape velocity while they themselves remain trapped under the load of this stodgy bread pudding of a movie.
To cite one other Maggie Smith film, “For individuals who like that type of thing, that’s the type of thing they like.”
And here’s the puzzling thing: the period during which the film takes place is 1928-29, right before everyone seems to be about to undergo the worst financial crash the world had ever known. Imagine the story this film could have told, the struggle and humanity to be mined from a hardship that’s shared by everyone at Downton. Imagine how relevant and meaningful this film might have been to the “latest era” we discover ourselves in.
The danger with returning to characters who’ve struggled to seek out their way and earned their success is that when you don’t have a latest story worthy of them, you risk undermining all that they’ve achieved. For nine years the true protagonist of “Downton Abbey” had been Lady Mary, the talented and modern young woman who senses a significantly better and more interesting future on the market, yet finds herself trapped within the hellish quicksand of her own time. Over six seasons and a movie she went from marriage chattel to not only a very independent woman but head of the family.
There are a number of moments when the show and characters we love are capable of shine through the clouds.
And where is she within the “latest era?” Alone and anxious again, her restless car-racing husband busy doing whatever it’s he does world wide, while she sits at home wondering whether he actually does care about her. At one point she tells someone she ranks at best third on her husband’s list of loves. “You expected to be higher?” her friend says, surprised. And he or she shrugs as if to say, You’re right, in fact. It’s as if she never escaped this world and its rules in any case. Just like the adults in so many English children’s stories, her ability to see or remember an existence crammed with magic and possibility has faded entirely. It won’t be long before she is complaining about employees’ salaries and calling for the likes of Margaret Thatcher. It took every little thing in me to not throw my tub of over-buttered popcorn on the screen.
I saw “Downton” after spending the morning at my niece’s college graduation. For over two hours we sat and waited because the university read through the graduating class’s 1,942 names. By the tip I wondered if hell won’t be just an limitless commencement, during which they never call your name and let you allow. (There needs to be a greater method to do this ceremony; perhaps they need to have a D.J. spinning discs while the scholars come up and switch the entire thing right into a dance party.)
After watching “Downton” I had the same thought: What if the “latest era” that creator Julian Fellowes trumpets just isn’t in reality some latest time period that the characters have entered, but a latest metaphysical state? What if our characters are literally all dead and trying to seek out their way out of purgatory? Possibly the awe we see on Lady Mary’s face as Molesley gives his astonishing incantation is the wonder of rediscovering there’s something waiting for her beyond this limitless repetition of formal wear, bad men and hole repartee.
Like doves that were captured and domesticated way back, these characters we grew to like and admire stand around in “A Latest Era” with little desire or aspiration, ever more asleep to what they’ve lost. There are windows throughout them. If only they may remember what it felt wish to fly away.
