Down and Out
Anglophiles that get tingly at the sight of ostentatious class signalling and sound of the Queen’s English now need a new fix.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Director: Simon Curtis • Writer: Julian Fellowes
Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter, Paul Giamatti, Elizabeth McGovern, Penelope Wilton, Dominic West, Alessandro Nivola
UK / USA • 2hrs 4mins
Opens Hong Kong September 11 • I
Grade: B
I may have jumped the gun a few years back when I suggested Downton Abbey: A New Era could (or should) be the end of the line for the Downton Abbey franchise. Mea culpa; I was wrong. But Julian Fellowes’s ultra-white (this movie is positively luminescent) and super-British (the Empire’s not dead yet) TV and movie series that did its level best to put a charming, soapy spin on turn of the 20th century class division is actually done this time. No, really. It’s over. It’s called Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. What more proof do you need?
And Fellowes and returning director Simon Curtis have made The Grand Finale all about just that, many of them in fact: finales, that is. Picking up after the acerbic Dowager died in the last film (Maggie Smith’s portrait looms large, though) the film nudges the Crowley clan into the early-1930s, following the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression – of which there is nary a whiff here. Not even the Poors downstairs seem that hard up. And I guess that’s fine, because Downton Abbey in all its iterations has always been about retro-fantasy, and about celebrating the grace (snort), class (puh-lease) and fundamentally righteousness (hee hee) of the British aristocracy. The Crowleys are crazy-progressive, and even when they have to be tapped on the shoulder it’s very gently, and always a welcome revelation. This is historical era-set melodrama, not a historical drama, so the injection of modern ideas doesn’t clang too much. It’s all very inoffensive and probably the fond, fuzzy send-off fans will appreciate before seeking out a fresh source of dropped Rs and dressing for dinner.
Behold, the unseasoned
Where to begin with the low stakes dilemmas resolved at lightning speed this time around? As The Grand Finale is all about transitions, the inevitable passage of time and next generations the key episodes (and “episodes” is a good description seeing as the film feels like three stitched together) hinge on Robert and Cora Crawley (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern), but mostly Robert, wrestling with the idea of giving up the financially taxing Grantham House in London and leaving management of Downton to his only heir, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery); Lady Mary’s scandalous, society-shaking, status-imploding divorce from the car dude; and the Dowager’s sparring partner Isobel Grey (Penelope Wilton) taking over as the chair of the town’s annual fair, and aggressively mixing it up. She even invites a Person With A Real Job, incoming cook Daisy (Sophie McShera), to sit on the board. Clutch yo’ pearls.
Mixed in amid all this (ahem) excitement is the arrival of Cora’s brother from America, Harold and his shady AF financial advisor Gus (Paul Giamatti and Alessandro Nivola) at Downton, who everyone finds suspicious. Downstairs, outgoing head butler Mr Carson (Jim Carter) is having a hard time staying retired, much to the chagrin of incoming head butler Andy (Michael Fox), and all this hoo-haa just as Cora, Mary’s sister Edith (Laura Carmichael), and her very pregnant maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) conspire to re-win the town’s affections for Mary by throwing a party and inviting actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West), who took over Downton for his film in A New Era, his kinda secret boyfriend, former butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) and their new buddy, writer and bon vivant Noël Coward (scene-stealer Arty Froushan).
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is very much in tune with its origins and its legacy, and probably its core audience, so as a film it’s: Fine. It’s not bad. It’s not particularly good. It’s just a harmless diversion that allows you to boo and hiss at the bitches who sneer at Mary for being divorced and awww and fist-pump at Robert and Mr Carson when they defend her or when Edith and her husband Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton) tacitly approve of Guy and Thomas’s relationship by not condemning it. It makes us feel comfortable in our morality now, despite all evidence the world is moving backwards.
It’s also all very handsome, impeccably mounted (the production design by regular Donal Woods is lush as usual) and solidly acted, with a few moments of stuffy levity and ever-so subtle shade-tossing. When Edith puts Gus in his place (because of course he has a “place”) it’s with sophisticated, upper crust snark, but it is kind of hilarious. On that note it must be said the humour mostly pivots on struggling screenwriter Mr Molesley’s (Kevin Doyle) frustrated attempt to meet Coward and jokes about olds having sex but again. Harmless. The Grand Finale is really the conclusion we were all expecting – no more, no less – and it doesn’t embarrass itself. Good enough. But here’s hoping someone has the foresight to put Froushan’s Coward in a film with Corey Stoll’s Midnight in Paris Ernest Hemingway. That would be something grand.