London, early 20th century. Helen Schlegel writes a letter to her sister, Margaret, about how she got engaged to Paul from the rich Wilcox family, yet the latter changes his mind and cancels everything. Some time letter, Helen meets Leonard Bast (20), whose umbrella she mistakenly took during a rainy day. He promised to marry Jacky, but doesn’t love her. Some time later, the Wilcox family celebrates a wedding and rents an apartment right next to Schlegel’s. Margaret becomes friends with Ruth Wilcox, the wife of Henry Wilcox, and mentions how she will have to move out of the apartment in 18 months. On her deathbed, Ruth writes a letter in which she leaves the inheritance of the Howard’s End estate to Margaret, but the Wilcox family disregards it. Some time later, Henry proposes and marries Margaret. It turns out Henry once had an affair with Jacky, but Margaret disregards it. Helen becomes pregnant with Leonard, who is killed when Charles Wilcox assaults him. In the end, Margaret inherits Howard’s End with Henry, after all.
Forgotten as soon as it premiered at the cinemas, “Howard’s End” did not age well and looks really bland today: stiff, theatrical, overlong and anemic, it is an ambitious and good, but overrated film that did not advance into a classic, contrary to what many expected. While James Ivory’s film “A Room With a View” gives period drama films a good name, “Howard’s End” gives it a bad name. While some of the blame falls on E. M. Forster’s eponymous novel, Ivory himself narrowed his range by insisting on a rushed, chaotic approach in a vague story about inheritance of the title mansion, which is overstuffed with too many characters (a dozen of them) instead of focusing on one, the heroine Margaret Schlegel, played wonderfully by Emma Thompson, who is a rare saving grace here. The messy storyline itself is kind of convoluted, since it starts three time, introducing subplot after subplot, all of which lead to another subplot, until the main plot tangle is finally set up some 45 minutes into the film (the Wilcox family hiding from Margaret that she was suppose to inherit the mansion). Furthermore, no action has any consequences on the rest of the events: when Margaret finally hears about the said secret from Henry at the end, the film undergoes one of the most awkward interrupted endings ever, not allowing for her reaction to it. The sequence where Henry admits of having an affair with Jacky is also awkwardly directed, with three strange fades to black, only for the scene to continue in the same room. This truncates Margaret’s character. Some scenes would have worked better with a different take on it: for instance, Charles Wilcox beats up Leonard because the latter impregnated Helen in an affair, but it would have made far more sense if it was Paul Wilcox who assaults, since the latter had a fling with Helen. The wonderful cinematography, lush costumes and set designs, as well as subtle messages about the dominant-subordinate relationship between a rich upper-class and a middle-class family still ring true. "Howard's End" is a quiet, ambitious historical drama, it's just that it is just so lifeless.
Grade:++
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