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Tag: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

  • Farewell, Downton

    Photo: Rory Mulvey/Focus Features

    Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is a work at fascinating odds with itself. On one hand, the film is the ultimate nostalgia bait, the third spinoff of Julian Fellowes’s upstairs-downstairs series that debuted in 2010 and has endured, in some form or another, since then. It goes down easy, the atmosphere so enveloping that you basically forget how this whole project is a love letter to the aristocracy and a patronizing pat on the head for the working class. On the other hand, despite being the narratively thinnest film in the franchise, The Grand Finale is also the most existentially despairing, driven by the questions of what it takes to enact social change and, ultimately, what it means to leave Downton Abbey behind.

    The Grand Finale offers answers that are totally unsurprising. Time marches forward, and there’s nothing we do can stop it. The new generation will always make choices their elders don’t quite understand. Capitalism is better than socialism. (I don’t agree with that one, but The Grand Finale makes that point at least three times!) Downton Abbey fans have seen this all before. But that also might be what makes The Grand Finale such an effective end point for this franchise. It reassures us that everything the ever-growing Crawley family holds dear — their money, their property, their proximity to power, and their belief in the royal hierarchy as the best way to rule — remains worthy of protection, and it also offers the thinnest sliver of forward progress to appease any worries that the series’ interest in the past is also an explicit endorsement of conservatism or traditionalism. It’s a perfect threading of the fanciful fan-service needle, aside from the fact that (spoiler alert!) Matthew Goode isn’t onscreen for even one moment. He’s now claimed two scheduling conflicts as reasons he doesn’t appear in these movies; was Dept. Q worth missing out on Goode in a tuxedo? Arguable.

    Just like how the previous film, A New Era, was a fairly meta experiment in what it takes to make a Downton Abbey movie, The Grand Finale is a meta experiment in what it takes to end the whole thing. (Simon Curtis directed this one, too.) Set in 1930, The Grand Finale begins a couple years after the events of A New Era, with everyone on the precipice of change. In A New Era’s final act, the Earl of Grantham, Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), told his eldest daughter, Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery), that Downton Abbey and the future of the family were now in her hands. Similarly, longtime Downton butler Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) was finally preparing to retire and hand the running of the home’s staff over to former footman Andy (Michael Fox). What would these men, whose decades were defined by service, do when their time is over? What would their purpose be?

    The Grand Finale equates these questions as if these men are of the same class, because it’s always been part of Fellowes’s imagination that Lord and Lady Grantham and all their family members are extremely considerate, kind, patient, and generous toward their household staff, no matter how anachronistic that characterization may be, as though the kindness would erase the massive wealth gaps with which these characters live. And he applies the same Pollyannaish touch to the film’s other source of drama: Lady Mary’s divorce from her second husband, race-car driver Henry Talbot (Goode). In this age of gossip columnists and paparazzi photographers, Mary is immediately shamed by negative press coverage of her divorce, and she becomes a social pariah as soon as the news gets out. (Viewers of The Gilded Age, Fellowes’s currently airing 1880s-set historical drama, will recognize that the writer is doing some double-dipping here; the impact of a high-society lady’s divorce is also a major plot point in the HBO series’ third season.) Mary’s family is ready to go to war for her, but they have bigger things to worry about when Lady Cora’s (Elizabeth McGovern) brother Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti) arrives in London to discuss the settling of their mother’s estate. The fact that Harold brings along an unknown-to-the-family American businessman named Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola) is weird, but Gus is such a smooth talker, effective flirter, and loquacious flatterer that Mary lets her guard down — maybe to her detriment.

    Downton Abbey’s (white) ensemble grew more sprawling with each season and film, and a number of other story lines — one about a county fair and one on the entertainment industry — fly around The Grand Finale to appease them all. (A New Era had a Black band performing in Paris; The Grand Finale has a silent South Asian family bowing to nobles while watching the horse races — that’s all the diversity you’ll get in this ever-so-genteel version of Europe before World War II.) In typical Fellowes fashion, all these subplots involve class and social status in some way, and also in typical Fellowes fashion, they all boil down to “Isn’t it wonderful when the rich are nice to the workers whose labor funds their privilege? But, like, don’t get any revolutionary ideas!” How this franchise has eroded the initially shit-kicking ideologies of Allen Leech’s former Irish socialist Tom Branson boggles the mind; as if his saving the king from assassination in A New Era weren’t enough, in this film he says being a capitalist is simply “being sensible.” Fellowes’s affection for the monarchy is explicit and implicit, and his writing treats the briefest moments of attention from the wealthy — actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West) remembering Downton’s staff; playwright and composer Noël Coward (Arty Froushan) acknowledging the work of footman turned screenwriter Mr. Molesley (Kevin Doyle) — like earth-shattering events of diplomacy. Attempting any kind of praxis read of The Grand Finale is a fool’s errand.

    Yet The Grand Finale moves briskly because it’s the cinematic equivalent of great gowns, beautiful gowns. John Lunn’s soaring score makes shots of Highclere Castle, which stands in for Downton Abbey, particularly magical; Anna Robbins’s luxurious costumes, all satin, lace, and brocade, are once again gorgeous; Nivola’s smirk is a welcome bit of Yankee attitude. (God, that smirk!) The resplendent production and art design complement theater shows, dinner parties, horse races, and carnival outings, and the deeply experienced cast members hit all their marks of humor and pathos. Put aside the (lack of) realism of any of this and it’s thoroughly pleasurable, especially in how it’s a movie for the girlbosses, with Mary, Cora, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), and Lady Edith Pelham (Laura Carmichael) all getting moments to tell men what’s what, another recurring Downton Abbey bit; how gracious of their elder male counterparts to step aside so they can step forward. Lord Grantham’s disgust with the word “weekend” would have been the film’s funniest moment, until Harold falls asleep reading Charles Dickens and asks if Downton Abbey has any murder mysteries in its library, only to be snippily told by the butler that there might be some in the nursery. This film has no interest in the family’s children; they only appear onscreen to be read to and play bucolically with their nannies. But Fellowes’s formula provides such smooth-brained pleasure that I wouldn’t be surprised if Downton Abbey: The New Class materializes in a decade’s time. This franchise may claim it’s finally leaping into the future, but its identity will always be in an idealized version of a wealthy white past.

    Roxana Hadadi

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  • Reviews For The Easily Distracted: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

    Title: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

    Describe This Movie In One Simpsons Quote:

    KRUSTY: Now, when the wealthy dowager comes in, the party’s over, right? Wrong! [hits dowager with pie]
    HOMER: [writing] Kill wealthy dowager.

    Brief Plot Synopsis: Rich Brits enjoy brief lull in world wars.

    Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 sensible chuckles out of 5.

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    Tagline: “The time has come to say goodbye.”

    Better Tagline: “Eat the rich.”

    Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Time marches on, even for aristocrats. Lord Robert and Lady Cora Crowley, the Earl and Countess of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern) are faced with financial turmoil (again) as they prepare to turn over Downton Abbey to daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery). This in spite of her recent scandalous divorce, which threatens to make her a pariah on the British social scene. Meanwhile, the Countess’ brother Harold (Paul Giamatti) is dealing with money troubles of his own, and has brought along fellow American Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), who has some potentially unwelcome ideas about solving them.
    “Critical” Analysis: “Sometimes I feel like the past is a more comfortable place then the future.”

    That’s a non-throwaway line said near the end of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale by Mr. Carson (or Mr. Bates … one of those guys) that, in the immediate sense, addresses the (for them) galvanic changes taking place at the storied Yorkshire estate. The year is 1930, after all, and while the aristocracy is (slightly) falling out of favor, upper class mores are still formidable obstacles to, say, divorced women poised to take over their family’s ancestral home.

    Lady Mary is hardly the only person in Downton confronted by personal upheaval. Young assistant cook Daisy Parker (Sophie McShera) is about to take over for the retiring Mrs. Patmore, while longtime butler Mr. Carson (Jim Carter, who I just remembered played Déjà Vu in Top Secret!) is stepping down, replaced by Mr. Parker (Michael Fox). And everyone is grappling with the recent demise of the Dowager Countess (the late, great Maggie Smith). They’re dealing with a lot of shit.

    But as in seasons past, outside world intrusions mostly serve as mild inconveniences (the occasional Titanic sinking notwithstanding). Snotty Americans like us — who used to be able to mock other countries’ despotic rulers — can roll our eyes at the thought of being forced out of a royal reception due to our marriage failing, but the loss of social standing counts as Serious Business in the Julian Fellowes-verse.

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    Fellowes, before creating Downton Abbey, made his bones on the shenanigans of stodgy Brits, winning an Oscar in 2002 for Gosford Park. That and Downton, and newer Fellowes efforts like The Gilded Age, serve as a kind of comfort food for a … certain demographic, with any social critiques comfortably swaddled in elegant wardrobes and sumptuous locales, while potential disasters either come to nothing (Mary’s “unladylike” pursuit of pleasures of the flesh) or are deus ex machina’d off screen (Anna’s rapist in season five). Familial rifts are temporary, and life marches on.

    Not that Fellowes has been shy about killing off occasionally beloved characters (my mother quit the show after Matthew’s car accident), the better to reinforce the stiff upper lip of it all, I suppose.

    But these movies are nostalgia, nevertheless. The horrors of The Great War and the 1918 pandemic may drift over the transoms of the Granthams’ lives, causing temporary consternation. But in the end, things are wrapped up nicely with a cup of tea and the reinforcement of comfy class divisions.

    The Grand Finale is more of the same from Fellowes, and that’s fine. If you’re going in expecting some significant deviation from the formula that made the series one of the most successful programs in British TV history, you’re going to be disappointed. For everyone else, there’s plenty of pithy rejoinders and dazzling gowns to go around.

    Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is in theaters today.

    Pete Vonder Haar

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  • ‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ Review: The Beloved Franchise Bows Out on a Confident Parting Note

    All good things must come to an end. Even “Downton Abbey,” the beloved historical drama that launched an instant fandom in 2010 when it started off as a lavish TV series about the inner workings of an aristocratic post-Edwardian family, the Crawleys, and their devoted staff.

    Since then, writer-creator Julian Fellowes has gracefully transformed the series into an equally alluring three-film trilogy. And with the elegant and sharply humorous final edition, “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,” he proves yet again that he knows exactly how to harness the elements that made the show so steadily captivating, beyond its gorgeous costumes and detailed production design: a commitment to consistent character work across the era’s social class lines, as well as a handsomely sober portrayal of the past with a steady gaze toward the future.

    In that, many hardcore “Downton” devotees will know that one of the mainstay themes of the franchise has been preserving Downton’s well-earned honor across the changing times, which have challenged the family and their servants with various ups and downs, with many an impossible-to-please, high-profile guest, and instances of love, death and even war that entered the orbit of the Crawley estate. Through it all, protecting that top-drawer “Downton” integrity — not just of the fictional house, but of the entire franchise — must have been on Fellowes’ mind as a priority too, while he thoughtfully evolved the upstairs and downstairs residents of the majestic estate on their own plausible terms.

    In the final film, one character wistfully suggests that the past might be a more comfortable place to live than the future. Be that as it may (especially for the privileged), but if “Downton” owes its enduring appeal to anything, that would be Fellowes’ determination to gradually push the characters we’ve gotten to know so well out of their comfort zones in the cozy past. And so “The Grand Finale” is proudly marked by that disposition too, perhaps more than either “Downton” movie or any of the TV episodes that came before it. Despite the nostalgic glow that prettily coddles the film, there is a delectably unsubtle passing-the-baton theme that runs through the richly populated affair.

    The latest story starts off with a scandal — the very kind that would make us feel grateful for the present times and be rightfully judgmental of the past — involving Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), who’s been navigating the social scene as a freshly divorced woman. We are in the 1930s now, and the shiny London season — with Noel Coward plays and lush balls, like the one Lady Petersfield (Joely Richardson) throws annually — is in full swing. But when Lady Mary shows up to the affair in an unapologetically crimson gown with her parents Lord and Lady Grantham (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern), little does she know that she is about to be humiliated by getting kicked out of the party. Turns out, divorced women weren’t welcome at the time. (Perhaps, Fellowes’ script contrastingly suggests, the past wasn’t all that comfortable a place, after all.)

    The troubles only grow when Lady Grantham’s American brother Harold (a winsome Paul Giamatti) turns up with mysterious financial advisor Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola, wonderfully enigmatic) and a side of some bad news. It seems he has lost a great deal of the fortune left from the Dowager Countess of Grantham (late Dame Maggie Smith), and whatever he was able to salvage, he did thanks to Gus. Feeling like an outcast and burdened by financial troubles, Mary falls for the loose-limbed American charms of Gus’, and the two have a one-night stand that Mary’s loyal right-hand Anna (Joanne Froggatt) discreetly notices. Come to find, Gus is not the reliable advisor he says he is, though he’s certainly bold enough to threaten Mary’s reputation.

    Enter clever Tom (Allen Leech) to blow Gus’ ruse and save the family from further ruin with his business sense, as well as Mary’s formidable sister Edith (Laura Carmichael), who, along with reliable members of the Downton staff, slyly puts together a dinner party to restore Mary’s social standing. The bait for the guests? The in-person attendance of Noel Coward (an absolutely delightful Arty Froushan) and film star Guy Dexter (Dominic West, in a charismatic return). Traveling with the duo is former Downton staff member Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), who is now Guy’s partner, dresser and close friend. In one scene, he joins the “upstairs” ranks for a drink as a signifier of the changing times. Elsewhere, during a satisfying scene set against the backdrop of horse races (and many, many spectacular hat varieties), Edith tells off Gus in non-negotiable terms, stepping in to protect the dear sister with whom she’d formerly had a complex relationship.

    The crowded film includes other plotlines around reluctant-to-retire butler Carson (Jim Carter) and his enthusiastic successor Andy (Michael Fox); the impending County Fair, now open to Daisy (the always enchanting Sophie McShera) taking over for Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) as Downton’s cook; and Kevin Doyle’s successful screenwriter Mr. Molesley, desperate to make himself visible to Noel Coward. It’s no easy task, given that Coward is busy being inspired by Lady Mary’s divorce story, which will serve as the basis of his play “Private Lives.”

    It’s no surprise that “The Grand Finale” is thoroughly fun, stunning to look at (one more hat-tip to the costumes, especially the bias cuts and cowl necks, designed by Anne Robbins) and aptly emotional as the iconic brand’s swan song. There are expected doses of fan service throughout (including a playful wink to one of Dame Smith’s most unforgettable lines, “What’s a weekend?”) and a neatly achieved final sequence that says a lovely and memorable farewell to all those for whom the show has meant so much. But what lingers most after “The Grand Finale” is its handle on the end of an era, which inherently comprehends that big ideas matter more than massive estates. (In that, a scene where Lady Mary and Lord Grantham entertain buying an apartment in London is beautifully written.) What also packs a punch is the final dedication to Dame Maggie Smith, who might not be with us anymore, but her spirit is generously felt all over “The Grand Finale.”

    Tomilaffly

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