Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s third novel, James Ivory’s film explores a lost world where “order and tradition” still prevail. Sometimes it is difficult for us to remember what some of the old values – position, formality, dignity, temperance, decorum or loyalty – meant to those who lived in our past. Yet, as we follow the story of Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton (both Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson received Academy Award nominations for completely inhabiting these roles), we are also given a sense of the ways in which our history is made by missed opportunities or might-have-beens. Rarely does a film, besides showing how utterly precious our memories can be to us, also make the effort to explore how even memories of our worst failures can still possess great value. The Remains of the Day does both these things with reverence.
—J.A.A. Purves