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The Remains of the Day
Stevens ............. Anthony Hopkins
Miss Kenton
......... Emma Thompson
Lord Darlington ..... James Fox
Mr. Lewis
........... Christopher Reeve
Stevens' Father ..... Peter Vaughan
Columbia Pictures presents a film
directed by James Ivory. Produced by Mike Nichols,
John Calley and Ismail
Merchant. Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Photographed by Tony Pierce-Roberts.
Edited
Theologically, this film might be
understood as a critique of servanthood. Anthony
Hopkins plays Stevens,
butler to Lord Darlington, whose ultimate goal
is to do all he can to render service to his employer. Everything else in
life escapes him. It is 1936, and Stevens is
oblivious to the fact that his employer, Lord Darlington,
is a German sympathizer. It is not his place, Stevens
thinks, to hold opinions on political matters, or even to oppose racial
oppression. Stevens is too busy serving his Lord
even to attend to his dying father. And he stiffly avoids responding to
the attentions of the attractive housekeeper, Miss Kenton, played by Emma Thompson. Years later, after she has made an unhappy
marriage, he visits her, hoping to renew their professional relationship
and (evidently) also the former possibilities of romance. But he cannot
change his shy, uncommunicative, all-business demeanor, and
communication again fails.
The film seems to be telling us that
Stevens should not have been so preoccupied with
service to his employer; he should also have served himself. As it turned
out, he lost everything worth having in life.
The film also places Stevens over against the background of Europe in the
'30s, where many Germans, like him, sacrificed their minds and hearts to
an impressive, but ultimately wicked, regime. The film seems to want to
tell us that the mentality of those Germans, blind as they were to
Hitler's atrocities, was not absent from other countries: even such a
quaint and lovable figure as the English butler may have harbored an
culpable ignorance and indifference that gave aid and comfort to Naziism. Thus the film thinks that Stevens
not only destroys himself, but he is a menace to society as well.
I have some sympathy for the film's
point of view. There is a fanatical kind of service that considers any
sort of enjoyment to be a vice. That kind of service is not the
service described in Scripture, service of the God who "gives us all things
richly to enjoy" (I Tim. 6:17). Such fanatical service is indeed
destructive, both personally and socially.
I must say, however, that I found
the character of Stevens hard to believe, though
the performance of Hopkins (like that of Thompson) is wonderfully nuanced
and effective. Was this kind of tunnel-vision actually typical of English
butlers in the 1930s? I have no first-hand knowledge of the institution of
the "great English household," so I can't say for sure.
("Upstairs, Downstairs," the television series of some years
ago, presented a much more sympathetic picture of a household butler.) But
I think if I were a butler I would be somewhat scandalized, in this
day when films are supposed to be avoiding stereotypes. The
whole thing strikes me, frankly, as caricature. No doubt, of
course, there was at least one butler in 1930s England who was
as divorced from reality as Stevens. But the
film seems to regard him as more than an individual weird case: he is
somehow a type, a representative of an institution, even of the working
class as a whole, so that he bears the author's indictment of
national apathy on social issues.
These filmmakers seem to be telling
us by this caricature that really devoted service is foolish and socially
destructive. They seem to think that we need to be more self-centered,
more concerned with our own enjoyment of life, more preoccupied
by politics and social issues. In reply, it seems to me that (1)
we need something more than a caricature to make that argument stick.
(2) What we need in our own society (1993) is actually more devoted service, less self-seeking, and less political activism, however
important the last two categories are in their proper place. It is
precisely the "me-centered" ideal which has destroyed much that
is valuable in our world.
As the Servant of the Lord (Isa. 53), Jesus is a far cry from Stevens
the butler. He stood for justice and for the abundant life. He enjoyed
fellowship with his Father, the God of heaven and earth, a God who is
quite absent from the present film. And he was no Kantian
ethicist, opposing duty to pleasure. On the
contrary, he promised the richest rewards to those who follow Him. But he
did not consider service to be beneath him, even service to his disciples.
He washed his disciples' feet (as Stevens brought
hot water to soak the feet of a French visitor), and he promises to wait
at our table at the eschatological marriage feast (Luke 12:37). He is the
good butler, as He is the good shepherd, who lays down his life for his
sheep.
And he calls us to serve Him, a service which brings perfect freedom. We are slaves, but also kings and priests. And friends of Jesus. Christianity, especially Reformed Christianity, has always emphasized such service to Christ and to other people: family, church, state, employer. Hence the economic prosperity of those nations most leavened by the Reformed gospel. There is nothing foolish about such service, and its social consequences have been universally beneficial, not destructive. The Stevens-stereotype represents a secularized version of that Christian ethic of service, as 1930s English society in general survived on the "remains" of a rejected Christianity. The secularization of that ethic makes it look stupid, as in this film (so stupid as to compromise, for me, the film's dramatic impact). But it would be unfortunate if such stereotypes led people even further from the Christian doctrine of service, and into more of the modern me-centered thinking which leads to death.