Instead, director Stephen Soucy gives us an intimate look at a team composed of the meticulous, Oregon-bred Ivory and the audacious Merchant, born in India and raised as a Muslim. Soucy takes us on an informative, often revealing journey into Merchant/Ivory world.
Merchant and Ivory were best known for highly regarded costume dramas based on literary works such as A Room With A View (1986), Howards End (1992), and Remains of the Day (1993). They brought a sense of literacy to art house audiences, as well as to a larger public that found the team's work beautiful and edifying.
Although the movie contains interviews with both Ivory and Merchant, who died in 2005 at the age of 68, it also brings insights from what could be called the Merchant/Ivory repertory company: Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins, and more.
Packed with detail, Merchant Ivory's accomplishments are twofold: to serve as a reminder of the scope of what some regarded as prestige cinema. The documentary also reveals how two men -- often working with writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins -- struggled to bring their pictures to the screen.
Not surprisingly, Merchant emerges as the dominant personality. He's described as a lovable rascal and conman with the nerve and faith required to begin productions before the money to complete them had been raised. Merchant charmed actors who hadn't been paid, and cooked for casts and crews as an act of endearment meant to convince them they were part of a family.
Merchant and Ivory lived together as a gay couple. Few talked about their gayness, but it was understood by those who traveled in their sphere.
It's a bit of a stretch, but when we contrast Ivory with Merchant, we might say that skill (Ivory) makes interesting things; flamboyance (Merchant), on the other hand, tends to be interesting in and of itself.
Soucy assembles impressive clips from the Merchant/Ivory catalog, snippets of a varied filmography that should encourage viewers to revisit favorites or discover movies they may have missed.
It's possible that the Merchant/Ivory names no longer speak to younger audiences, but Ivory, now 95, still works. In 2018, he won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay of Call Me By Your Name, and the body of Merchant Ivory work remains impressive.
Whatever you think about the Merchant/Ivory movies -- some saw them as stodgy, conservative throwbacks -- the two were responsible for some of the most impeccably cast and best-acted movies of the 1980s and 1990s. That’s quite an achievement.
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