Stevens is meant as a tragicomic figure, which is easier to accept in the prize-winning original novel by the Japanese-English writer Kazuo Ishiguro. There the story is told by Stevens himself, with Ishiguro controlling all the ironic nuances of a narrative that moves from complacent self-deception to chagrined realization of a wasted life. The novel is a writer’s tour de force, but the film, scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, sets the characters in the light of reality, and it may arouse more impatience than empathy. “Come off it, Stevens, you stiff upper drip,” we may think as the butler performs his ballet of elegant obsequiousness, a very Baryshnikov of bowing and scraping.
The film reunites the team that made the deservingly honored “Howards End,” producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, writer Jhabvala and the two stars. Hopkins and Thompson are superb actors, but they (and Ivory) can’t shake the sense that Stevens and Miss Kenton are less fully fleshed characters than embodiments of a thesis about the English class system. The genius of jeeves was that he was a subversive parody of that system; the butler was smarter than the asses he worked for. The most painful scene in the film occurs when a guest of Lord D.’s, to prove that democracy doesn’t work, quizzes Stevens about arcane political issues. “I’m unable to be of assistance,” says the butler. jeeves would have replied with dazzling doubletalk, throwing the snobs into confusion. “The Remains of the Day” is stately but depressing. Satire is the best revenge.
