The Merchant Ivory nomenclature, spoken so lovingly in trailers in the same tone commercials use the phrase “blue ribbon ice cream”, became of course a kind of epithet in the late ‘90s to toss at a rash of often uninspired spit-polish literary adaptations, some of them indeed turned out by the venerable masters director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and pet writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala themselves, including their awful adaptation of The Golden Bowl (2000). But the trio ought to at least be admired for rarely setting themselves easy tasks by way of adaptation, and their best works, like Howard’s End (1992) and A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (1998), whilst usually being over-literal, offer a trenchant capacity to explicate the intense emotional nuance of fine writing.
The Bostonians, the second of their three stabs at Henry James (the first was 1979’s The Europeans), takes on James’ 1887 novel, about the colliding trajectories of two different varieties of idealism and love that faces fervent young feminist Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter), an idealistic orator whose gifts of high-flown rhetoric channels blend the soaring high-mindedness of the emancipationists, with the finest American flimflammery, both gifts bestowed by her eccentric quack father (Wesley Addy). Those varieties are embodied by her friend and sponsor Olive Stanton (Vanessa Redgrave), whose concept of the female emancipation shades ever so subtly into a distinct, if not quite cognisant, desire to erect a lesbian idyll with Verena, and Basil Ransome (Christopher Reeve), an alpha-male gentleman from Mississippi who’s a distant cousin of Olive’s and a rhetorical enemy of the feminists, who sets his sights on Verena and begins pursuing her with determined, cocksure intensity.
Ivory commences, as background to the credits, with shots of an organist working his grand instrument, watching his feet and hands and noting the tremendous, amusingly physical effort required to make the resounding yet intricate music, and it could be something of a mission statement for Ivory’s own work, which plays the notes of James’ composition with contrapuntal intelligence, alternating viewpoints and examining each character’s position and potential with thorough feeling, as the story resembles a non-violent, non-pantheistic version of Lawrence’s The Fox. The empathy one offers and retracts to the main characters, who are each alternatively sympathetic and irritating, is carefully manipulated by Ivory’s absorbing direction, Jhabvala’s patient script, and the excellent performances achieve a multiplicity of hues.
The film then becomes a master class in describing the shifting emotional allegiances of both Verena and the viewer. Thusly, Olive’s social unease, true passion for her cause and weepy ardour for her young idol are affecting and painful, her wide glittering eyes saying all that’s needed about Olive’s delight in being rescued from the well of loneliness she’s been living in. And yet Olive’s methods and misanthropy – manipulating Verena, buying off her father, treating Basil with transparent discourtesy – possess a snaky, obnoxious undertone. Basil counters with self-possession, his detestation of the notions of female emancipation linked subtly to remnant abhorrence of the other variety of emancipation, his having fought for the South and setting out with honesty to make Verena his kewpie in a dollhouse as a form of gained property, and he wages a constant, cunning guerrilla war to close his grip on her. Basil’s naturally combatant to femininity, able to conceive it only in terms of his male prerogative to win and subdue, and yet Basil’s far from being a simplistic, easily dismissed chauvinist, distinguished by his upright manners, good-humour, and sentimental side – he weeps when visiting Harvard’s memorial for its boys lost in the war, some of whom he might killed – and he’s nettled by the equally naked attempts of Olive’s widowed sister to manipulate him into her marriage bed.
The alternations of power and message being exerted are subtly noted – the fact that Olive has bought Verena and tries to keep her renders her hardly, initially, more morally right than Basil, and his struggling status compared to her Brahmin security, further shade the power dynamics. But Basil has one inestimably powerful quality on his side: his masculine force, which recognises and responds to the fact that Verena’s effectiveness on stage is not one of an intellectual but as a kind of political showgirl, a professional flirt, a characteristic Verena turns on the men who court her – a number which also includes a more refined, politically sympathetic Harvard-attending scion (John Van Ness) – and Basil instinctively recognises she’s the kind to be conquered whether she likes it or not. Also adorning the narrative are two interesting, well-played foils, Miss Birdseye (Jessica Tandy), elderly embodiment of the logical link between the revolutionary spirit and the new suffragette movement, all sprightly good-humour and good will, and Dr. Prance (Linda Hunt), who’s bored by her fellows’ overweening idealism.
Like Peter Bogdanovich’s keen adaptation of Daisy Miller, Ivory’s film reminds me that in James’ droll recording of social strategies and exchanges of power, and the unexamined absurdity of public expectation exacerbated as mores begin to change, one can see the distinct roots of screwball comedy as well as a heavier brand of modern genre. The narrative here finally builds to one of those situations popular in the screwball comedy where a luckless outsider tries to win away his chosen bride from a cabal of high-pressuring interested parties, except with the irony here that the cabal is working for a good cause, whilst the loner hero’s victory is retrograde, and a tincture of tragedy is provided by the final incompatibility of ideals and overwhelming emotions, as manifested both around and within the characters. It’s the sort of story that’s both pretty and yet painful, with the inevitable threat that someone’s going to be left awfully hurt and perhaps even doomed. The finale attempts, with some success but not entirely convincingly, to leaven James’ conclusion by letting Basil and Verena leave the narrative happily with Olive forced to finally discover and realise her own potential as a feminist warrior.
As with all of Ivory’s works, this one is distinctly overlong, but the well-sustained emotional tension, if one can tap into it, keeps the film compelling, giving sufficient attention to the period milieu, but also retaining relevance to a contemporary streak in American politics, where a polished message coming from a pretty mouth can still stimulate wonders. Ingénue Potter didn’t make much of a splash in the role, and she’s disconcertingly cast considering she’s not the bewitching coquette the part would seem to require, but she’s really quite good at playing a woman whose fundamental character is far more malleable than she’d like to think, and her performance is laced with energy and feeling. Redgrave, for her part, is as utterly convincing and hypnotic as ever, but in many ways the film belongs to Reeve, armed with a gorgeous Southron accent, his great physique and square-jawed physiognomy perfect for embodying his character. The performance he turns in ought to be Exhibit A in any future efforts to argue his being one of the most underrated actors of his generation, and whilst it’s not quite cumulatively overwhelming, the film around him is more absorbing than it’s often given credit for. Big plus: Walter Lassally’s photography.
