Elizabeth McGovern | Peggy at the Movies

“Why would anyone want the actors to talk I would have thought silence would be a blessing.” Dowager Countess of Grantham

There is one thing you can always count on when visiting Downton Abbey – it’s a busy place. People hustling and bustling around, from the Crawley family themselves, to all the downstairs employees who are a family unto their own.

But as all things do – time goes on and things change. Hence we find ourselves with “DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA” and boy what an era this turns out to be for all at Downtown. So much is changing in the world and this new Downtown Era transfers beautifully to the film screen, mostly because it has a new vision and a new director in Michael Engler. The original cast whom we’ve all come to know and love is mostly back with Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), as always leading the way and as is tradition, she gets most of the best lines. The Granthams’ Robert (Hugh Bonneville), and Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), as well as daughters Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), and sister Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), are back as well with their families, though notably missing is Henry Talbot whose is away racing cars. This doesn’t bode well with Mary as she feels this takes precedence in his life and this might lead to a ‘wandering eye’ here or there. Though front and center is Tom (Allan Leech), who opens the film with his marriage being celebrated by all to Lucy (Tuppence Middleton).

The family and titles might be a bit hard to keep up with, but fans of the series have no problems remembering them all, For new fans, this film really has done a superb job in opening up the plot and the setting in this film in a truly new era.

The are two revolving plot lines in a New Era, one brings us the future, but the other brings us to the past. More specifically, the Dowager Countess’ past. But as half the household vacates Downton leaving Lady Mary behind to manage things at home. The rest of the family including Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), vacate to a beautiful seaside villa in the South of France that Lady Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham has mysteriously inherited from a Count that she met many many years ago. The Villa and the scenery surrounding the mystery is of course beautiful, but it also opens up the story to some very emotional family disclosures, and I will leave it there as the Countess herself notes: “I will say goodnight… and leave you to discuss my mysterious past.” And to tell you more would spoil it all.

On our other story set within the film, we watch as Downton Abbey moves to 1929 and with it, brings in not just the jazz age, but the movies itself within its doors. Movie lovers will remember that 1929, also heralded the end of the Silent movie era and talkies were taking over and the movie industry itself was being revolutionized with this. They manage to fit a lot in here with this theme as Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy), comes to town as a director wanting to make a movie using Downton as his location, also something that is changing – shooting from the backlots of studios to actual location shoots. Since Downton has fallen into some disrepair, the large location fee is most welcome – as is some of the movies cast, bringing in two famous silent films stars Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock), much to the enthrallment of Daisy (Sophie McShera) and Anna (Joanna Froggat).

The music score in this movie by John Lunn with the Downton theme that is so familiar to it’s audience, is effective in this movie and perfectly suits the family dynamics emotional side. As well, the wonderful soundtrack additions of the Jazz Age and songs of the era to round it all out. This film manages to have strong female characters and not only that but it’s also the perfect example on how to include gay characters without it feeling forced. Add in a certain amount of hi-jinx all around, and you’ve got yourself the follow-up movie we all needed.

The two stories are quite beautifully woven together and with so much of the original cast present, along with some wonderful new additions- this one works well in updating the story if this family we never seem to tire of.

Grade: B

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Review Screening: Friday, May 13, 2022 ~ Courtesy of Ginsberg/Libby PR

“DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA” FROM FOCUS FEATURES IS NOW IN THEATERS

I’m not an emotional film-goer and also don’t get to personal a lot with my reviews. I rarely, if ever, cry during a film. It’s just how I am. I’m not a ‘cold’ person and things move me, but I think it’s because sometimes I feel like I’ve seen it before or it simply has to move me in a way that others before it have not. The Imitation Game moved me because I felt as though it directly affected me personally being as I am originally from the Netherlands and in all likelihood, had Alan Turing & his team not come around, my parents, and even I, might not have existed. This film was like that for me as it moved me in that same type of way and yes, I cried. Does it make me give it a higher grade based on all this.. yeah I think it does, but then I can do that! 🙂

The story was so profound to me and memories of stories my family has told me of the horrors of the war, well it’s just something that whenever there is a film like this, it makes it all to realistic for me and I’m sure many others also.

It begins with “Maria Altmann” (Helen Mirren), an elderly Jewish refugee, who sees a notice that the Austrian government has finally decided to return famous works of art that the Nazi’s had stolen back at the beginning of World War II. She finds a young lawyer, “Randol Schoenberg” (Ryan Reynolds), his grandfather being the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who escaped to the United States after the Nazis declared his music be degenerate based on the fact he was Jewish, takes on the government to recover specifically, a painting of her Aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer aka the Woman in Gold, and other artwork by Gustav Klimt, she believes rightfully belongs to her family. With the help of an Austrian reporter played by Daniel Bruhl, they set out to do exactly that. By the time the film starts it’s story in 1998, the painting had literally had become one of their biggest tourist attractions. You went to Vienna, you had your coffee, you went to the opera and you went to see the Klimt ‘Woman In Gold’ painting. So as a lawyer says in the film, “You think a painting that ends up as a refrigerator magnet will ever leave Austria?”

As the story unfolds we see the wonderful Tatiana Maslany as the young “Maria” and Max Irons does a decent turn as her young opera singer husband “Fritz” and we watch as they make their escape from Austria.

Woman in Gold can be a bit wooden, and the acting by Mirren carries the picture, but Ryan Reynolds is truly not bad, though Katie Holmes as his wife “Pam” really offers nothing in a very small role. All in all the film shows great respect for its story and the Old World which Altmann and her attorney must revisit to make this case happen, and though she had vowed she to never return, she does, as well as the modern life she made for herself in Los Angeles with a small clothing shop she owned and worked at until her passing at age 94 in 2011. The scenes of a Vienna long past showed in flashbacks, are some of the best in the film. Altmann goes to the house where she grew up, which is now a commercial space, and we see as she imagines her family as they were on her wedding night, and even dances beside the guests and her younger self ~ yes, more teary moments for me.

I didn’t do any research into this film before seeing it and I highly recommend you don’t either. The story that unfolds will not leave you as you leave the theatre and that’s because shit like this is still going on. Austria and the Vatican..yes, the Vatican, still hold the largest cache of stolen Nazi art that they deny they have and will never give back, but also never share it with the world because that would be admitting what they did. And we know that’s never going to happen. And we should be so much more angry about than we are. As my family always said, they try to tell you it’s in the past and to get over it, but you can’t and you can never ever forget either. I haven’t and I never will. This movie reminded me to never do so. I hope it does you also.

Grade: B-
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REVIEW: “DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA (2022) Focus Features

“WOMAN IN GOLD” ~ (2015) Weinstein Co.

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