I screened this documentary out of a misplaced sense of duty. After all, the filmmaking team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory made a number of exceptional films over many years’ time, and Ivory is still going strong at age 95. Attention must be paid, and good work celebrated.
Stephen Soucy has done just that, but he’s given us a good deal more. Only an insider would be able to penetrate the curtain of discretion that has surrounded the filmmaking team for decades. It was known that of the two, Ivory was the hands-on director and Merchant the outgoing producer who raised the money to get movies like Shakespeare Wallah and The Bostonians made. Most of their films were scripted by the prize-winning author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala—not an Indian, it turns out, but a German Jew who married an Indian man (!). Those who cared also took note of their longtime composer, the talented Richard Robbins.
What fewer people knew, or had cause to question, is the fact that all four collaborators lived together for many years, mostly in upstate New York, and that the financial foundation of their company was wafer-thin almost all that time. The professional partnership was also intimately personal, and mostly not discussed. Ivory, who remains circumspect, laughs at the idea that he could discuss his homosexual relationship with his own father.
Some of Merchant Ivory conforms to the expected technique of drawing excerpts from their films and talking to key people who worked on them, from costume designers and editors to stars. Emma Thompson and Vanessa Redgrave are unblushingly candid about the chaotic atmosphere in which they worked…and their utter devotion to the team. Even Anthony Hopkins, who gave two of his greatest performances in Howards End and The Remains of the Day and wound up suing them for nonpayment of salary for a subsequent project, says admiringly of Merchant that he could charm birds out of the trees.
Merchant and Ivory also helped break down barriers when it came to the public perception of homosexuality, first in Maurice and then in Room With a View. They never saw themselves as crusaders; like everything they touched, they did this with a matter-of-fact directness that disarmed many viewers.
Not every documentary about filmmaking successfully dives beneath the surface as this one does. But then, few subjects are as rich, or as deep, as that of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. In short, they were one-of-a-kind. Make it a priority to catch this one; it opens in New York City and Los Angeles August 30 and will play in theaters nationwide over the next month. It is not available for streaming in the near future.
