MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Matt Greene Look, Howards End is a competent, mildly intriguing Merchant Ivory production about the paranoia of the wealthy. Mostly though it's over 2 hours of proof as to why I don't and have no desire to watch Downton Abbey. Posh people have quietly regal discussions, a sudden outburst of drama temporarily disrupts the nobility, repeat.

James Hitchcock E. M. Forster began his novel "Howards End" with the epigram "Only connect…", words which have been interpreted as a plea for a greater degree of imaginative sympathy between people of different social classes and (just as importantly) between people with different attitudes to life. The book tells the story of three Edwardian families, the Wilcoxes, the Schlegels and the Basts. Although Leonard Bast and his wife Jacky are from a working-class background, there is not much difference in socio- economic terms between the other two families, both part of the well-to- do bourgeoisie. There is, however, a big difference in their outlooks. The cultured, artistic and intellectual Schlegels, of German extraction, represent "old money". (Forster borrowed their surname from the Schlegel brothers, German writers and philosophers). The Wilcoxes, by contrast, represent "new money". The father of the family, Henry, is a self-made businessman, and he and his three children are far more interested in business and making money than they are in culture or the arts. The Howards End of the title is the Wilcoxes' family home, a large farmhouse belonging to Henry's wife Ruth, who is more in sympathy with the artistic outlook of the Schegels than the rest of her family. She becomes a close friend of Margaret, the oldest of the three Schlegel siblings. In the meantime Margaret's younger sister, Helen, has befriended Leonard Bast, a clerk in an insurance company, who shares her reverence for high culture. (They meet at a lecture on Beethoven). The story then follows the complications arising from these two friendships. This film was the last entry in the cinema's great Forster cycle of the eighties and early nineties, a period which saw filmed versions of five of his six novels. It was the third adaptation of a Forster novel by Merchant Ivory Productions, following "A Room with a View" and "Maurice". In my view it is, together with "A Room with a View", the best film of the Forster cycle, for a number of reasons. The first is that the Merchant-Ivory style of film-making, with its meticulous concern for period detail and its gentle, unhurried method of story-telling, seems admirably suited to the works of Forster. David Lean's grand epic manner was never an ideal match for "A Passage to India", a novel which, although it deals with political questions, concentrates on intimate personal relationships rather than the great historical events which formed the subject-matter of Lean's other late works. Charles Sturridge tried to imitate the Merchant-Ivory method in "Where Angels Fear to Tread", but could never quite bring it off. The second is the remarkable number of great performances which James Ivory was able to elicit from his cast. The film only won one acting Oscar, Emma Thompson for "Best Actress", but there were a number of other acting contributions of equal quality. Anthony Hopkins was perhaps not going to win a second Oscar so soon after "The Silence of the Lambs" the previous year, but to my mind he deserved "Best Actor" far more than Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman". (Whether he deserved it more than Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven" is perhaps another matter). Hopkins succeeds well in his difficult task of bringing out the two sides of Henry's personality. On the one hand he is arrogant, snobbish and autocratic, but on the other Hopkins needs to imply a hidden, more likable side to him if the audience is to accept him as Margaret's husband. (The two marry after Ruth's death). Helena Bonham Carter was well-known around this period for her acting in period dramas; she had appeared in two earlier Forster adaptations, "A Room with a View", and "Where Angels Fear to Tread". There is a nice contrast between her Helen- passionate, impetuous and rash- and Thompson's calmer, more measured Margaret. Helen has a strong social conscience which Margaret seems to lack, and at first comes across as the more sympathetic of the two sisters, yet Helen's well-intentioned interventions in other people's lives can have disastrous unintended consequences. As for Thompson, she gives an object lesson in the art of portraying a quiet, reserved character without making her dull or uninteresting. Thompson and Hopkins were to act together in another Merchant-Ivory drama the following year, "The Remains of the Day". Other excellent performances come from Vanessa Redgrave as Ruth Wilcox, James Wilby as Henry and Ruth's pompous, overbearing older son Charles and Samuel West as Leonard Bast. Bast is a tragic figure- he is clearly highly knowledgeable and intelligent, but because of his humble social origins is unable to put his intelligence to good use and is patronised and mistreated by those who consider themselves his social betters. He is also held back by his wife who shares neither his intelligence nor his aspirations. The third reason why the film works so well is the way in which it brings out the themes of the excellent novel on which it is based and makes them relevant to the 1990s (without ever labouring the point). The story might be set in the 1910s, yet its themes of the contrasting values of business and culture, of unemployment, of wealth and poverty, are still relevant even today. Henry Wilcox might be a figure from the Edwardian era, yet in 1992 his values would have seemed very familiar to those who had just lived through the boom years of the "greed is good" eighties. Leonard Bast recalls those who lost their jobs when that boom turned to bust. Even Helen, the woolly but well-meaning member of the liberal Guardian- reading classes, is a familiar figure to modern viewers. British heritage cinema, and the work of Merchant-Ivory in particular, is sometimes criticised as a mere exercise in sentimental nostalgia, with no relevance to modern times. "Howard's End" serves as the best possible refutation of that sort of criticism. 9/10

robert-temple-1 This is one of the finest films ever made, a testament to director James Ivory's unique sensitivity and genius. Of course, he started with a great novel by E. M. Forster, which always helps. But the screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvlala does it complete justice, as was always the case with her magnificent writing for the screen. I recently watched this again for the first time in years. My seeing performances of this story began with a London stage production long ago, where Gemma Jones was so brilliant in the role of the younger Schlegel sister played here by Helena Bonham Carter. This tale is so powerful and dramatic that it lends itself to novel, stage, and screen with equal facility. The story is bitingly, savagely critical of the hypocrisy and social injustice of England a century ago. This film's luminous centre is given it from the very first opening travelling shot, where Vanessa Redgrave is seen and followed as she roams in the twilight through her beloved garden at her house Howard's End, which she had inherited from her brother who died, and where she was born. Ivory avoids needless lighting, and we can barely make her out sometimes as she looks lovingly upon the flowers, the tree branches, and smells the redolent air, taking in the scents of early night. She stands outside looking into the drawing room through the open bow window, and is absorbing the adored atmosphere of the home she loves above all else in the world. Although she dies rather early in the film, Redgrave, as Ruth Wilcox, is radiant, mystical, supernatural in her mysterious performance, and she gives that inescapable tone of an underlying reality, of a concealed fate, beneath the surface of events, which make this film so utterly magical. All of the major performances are sensationally brilliant. Anthony Hopkins is so convincing as a crisp, matter-of-fact man of business who is in denial of all deeper feelings. Emma Thompson is at her most glorious as the infectiously irreverent and joyously alive older sister to the more serious Helena Bonham Carter. But in their scenes together they convey the carefree and heedless sisterliness of a joyful and playful household, they chatter together like magpies who have known each other since birth, they play, they joke, they romp, and truly they have captured on film exactly what such people could be like in those days. I knew groups of sisters like that as late as the 1960s and even the 1970s, before that terminal social decay set in, which destroyed all real joy in people's home lives and eradicated all such spontaneity and innocent fun in the drawing room. Every scene of this film reeks of authenticity and screams out: 'I'm really happening!' Or at least: 'Such things happened once!' Every scene of this film is composed so perfectly, the costumes are so exquisite, the art direction and production design are sensational beyond even the words of E. M. Forster to describe. The music is chosen so sensitively. Every breath is choreographed in this sumptuous spectacle of a lost world. As you watch this, you keep thinking: there is only one James Ivory. And he truly is an ivory in the lapidary sense, for he and everything he touches are carved by the gods.

TheLittleSongbird Having already seen A Room with a View and loving it, I saw Howards End having a feeling it would be good. After seeing it, I absolutely loved it, and think it marginally better than A Room with a View. Directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant and written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, it is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the novel, and on top of this is also an elegant, nuanced and fascinating film.The period detail is perfect. What I loved about A Room with a View especially was its gorgeous Italian settings. Here it is just as gorgeous, while also having a certain elegance about it. You can never go wrong with beautiful scenery, wondrous costumes and elegant-looking locations, Howards End had all three of those. The music is also a marvel, beautiful, haunting and hypnotic, somewhat reminiscent of a Phillip Glass score, while having a few snatches of Percy Grainger and Beethoven too.The script is very faithful in style to the book and warmth and depth is given to the characters, and the direction is sensitive and nuanced very like how it was in A Room with a View. The plot is quite complex, even on first viewing I found it a little hard to keep up with everything. Then again, this is the sort of film you may need to see more than once. It is quite slow moving, and at over 140 minutes hard to sit through in one sitting, but the period detail, music, screenplay and acting made the film pleasurable, elegant and even moving.Speaking of the acting, the whole cast give very strong performances, while not standing out from one another. Emma Thompson is endearingly-beautiful in Howards End, more beautiful than she looked in Much Ado About Nothing, and gives a moving and spirited portrayal of Margaret. Helena Bonham Carter delivers one of her best ever performances in this film, a performance filled with depth and passion that really wants to make you feel for her character. Vanessa Redgrave while her role is brief still leaves a lasting impression in a characterisation that is moving and wholly relevant, while as the cold Mr Wilcox Anthony Hopkins who a year later would give a brilliant performance in The Remains of the Day(another stylish and nuanced film) shows what a fine actor he is as he gives yet another fine performance. The more minor characters were also very well done, from a spirited Samuel West, whose character Leonard Bast exemplifies the low expectations of the clerking classes, to a suitably serious Jemma Redgrave as Evie Wilcox.Overall, moving, elegant, nuanced and impeccably acted, Howards End is a must see. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox