Some directors establish a brand so distinctive and consistent that, for better or worse, you know pretty reliably what you will get with any one of their films. Woody Allen comes immediately to mind, but perhaps an even better example is the body of work produced by director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, who founded Merchant Ivory* Productions in 1961 and were life and business partners until Merchant died in 2005. Their stylistic consistency (and consistent ambition, even though not every film was a hit), was aided by a number of frequent collaborators, including screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, assistant director and producer Richard Hawley, and composer Richard Robbins.
What do you get with a Merchant Ivory film? An interesting and intelligent script, often based on a literary work; beautiful production design with great attention to period detail and often location shooting as well; great actors doing some of their best work; a soundtrack that perfectly complements the rest of the film; and frequently subject matter that goes where few mainstream films were willing to go. In a word, their films were classy, bringing a taste of high-brow culture to the movie screen and thus to towns all over America. The fact that many of their films were made before home video became commonly available made their work that much more important to people far removed from cultural centers (not that the New Yorkers and Angelenos didn’t also eat it up). Some credit them with kicking off a new era of upscale costume dramas that appealed to the general public as well as the arthouse crowd, a trend that is still active today (Downton Abbey, anyone?).
Merchant Ivory: The Documentary includes a lot of clips from their work, and a lot of interviews (some of which drop juicy nuggets you aren’t likely to find elsewhere) with the filmmakers and those who worked with them. James Ivory is more heard from than Ismail Merchant, since he has the advantage of still being alive, but you also get dozens of interviews with creatives like costume designers Jenny Beavan and John Bright and editor Humphrey Dixon, hair designer Carol Hemming, and actors like Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, and Hugh Grant. If you’re a fan of their work, this film is a real trip down memory lane and may also motivate you to seek out some of their less famous films. If you don’t know their work, it offers a good introduction and may well intrigue you to check out their work.
Much as I enjoyed watching Merchant Ivory, it’s not a perfect film. For one thing, despite being explicitly organized into chapters, it sometimes left me wondering why some clips were included (although it’s director Stephen Soucy’s first feature, so perhaps we should grant him some grace). For another, it doesn’t dig into the specifics of their style, and thus remains much more an appreciation than an analysis. On the plus side, it features a lot of discussion about how Merchant and Ivory worked together, their personalities, and their relationship (the latter of which remained very hush-hush for years), so if any of those topics are of interest you’ll definitely want to see this film. | Sarah Boslaugh
*You could be forgiven for thinking that there was one person with that name, particularly if you were a young person in a not very sophisticated environment who looked forward to each new Merchant Ivory film the way some people look forward to their birthday. Just putting that out there for a friend.
Merchant Ivory: The Documentary is distributed on Blu-ray and DVD by Kino Lorber. Extras on the disc include a featurette with director Stephen Soucy; interviews with Emma Thompson, Helena Boham Carter, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hugh Grant, and Vanessa Redgrave; a featurette about the music in Merchant Ivory films; a clip of James Ivory and Stephen Soucy from the NY Indian Film Festival; James Ivory and Stephen Soucy in Conversation at the NYSWI Film Festival, and the film’s trailer.
