Merchant Ivory’s A Room With A View (1985), staring Maggie Smith and Helena Bonham Carter, was my introduction to E.M. Forster. It’s a story about youth and the sense of adventure that accompanies going out into the world as an adult for the first time and discovering possibilities you never even imagined. It’s also a story about the anxieties and self-doubt that generally plague us when we’re young. When I first saw this film as a young man, it was like a revelation. I felt very close to Lucy Honeychurch. She had led a rather restricted life. She was locked into a role, and she didn’t know how to free herself from it. I understood that. Lucy’s muddle was my muddle. I had hidden away my real self for the sake of blending in and going along to get along. I had done this for so many years that I didn’t fully understand exactly who I was or what I wanted. And I didn’t know how to pursue my goals because I was unsure of my goals. I was a tongue tied bundle of nerves, and if someone like George had come into my life, it probably would have scared me to death. I wasn’t even ready for Cecil, much less George. And the one I really wanted, Freddy, seemed so far out of my reach I was sure that I could only dream about having someone as lovely as Freddy. He was so cute, so pretty, so joyful and playful. And his hair… It was long in front so he could comb it back, but it was so light and feathery it never stayed in place. Every time he tilted his head forward his baby fine brown hair would cascade over his face.
Even though both Lucy and I couldn’t get past the strictures of our society, I envied Lucy. Her prison seemed to be a much more genteel prison than mine. I would have loved to have grown up in such a beautiful, stable home, surrounded by such loving, nice people.
This film meant so much to me that I watched it at least two or three times a year throughout my twenties. Seeing it always reminded me that the world was still fresh for me, still filled with possibilities. Watching it filled me with a sense of hope and optimism. While engaged in the story, I could believe my adventure was emergent and exciting things were about to happen. I could believe I could have a nice, comfortable honest life, a beautiful home, passion and love. The film made me happy to be alive.
I recently watched the film again after many years and discovered that it still had the power to make me feel good. I still adore all the characters. But I now see the story from the vantage point of someone who is middle aged and not young. I now more fully realize that, in its own quiet way, A Room With A View is a cautionary tale; if you want your view, you can’t be ashamed to ask for it and take it when it’s offered.
Lucy is surrounded by people who have led buttoned down lives, people who have allowed passion to slip by even when it was right there for the taking--her cousin, Charlotte Bartlett, the Reverend Mr. Beebe, the Miss Alans, Mr. Eager, Cecil Vyse and even Eleanor Lavish. Miss Lavish liked to present herself as a woman of the world who was open for anything, but she came off as a bit ridiculous, and the reason for this is because she was self-deluded. She was every bit the English tourist in Italy as those she chastised for going about the country with their travel guides in hand, and her racy novels were nothing more than schoolgirl fantasies. Eleanor Lavish was a woman of 50 who was still in the midst of adolescence. She could dream about passion, and she could imagine living a different way, but she never found the courage to realize her dreams.
The Reverend Mr. Beebe was a very sweet man, but when I was young, he seemed so scrubbed, polite and sexless. And of course that’s because he was scrubbed, polite and sexless. Freddy and George talked him into going skinny dipping, and it was only then that he was reminded that he had a body and that it could be used for something other than a clothes hanger for his clerical uniform. When I watched the film again the other day, I was struck by how young Mr. Beebe looked, and I was shocked to find out that Simon Callow was only in his mid 30’s--more than ten years younger than I am now--when he played Mr. Beebe. Back in my early twenties, I thought he and Denholm Elliott, who played Mr. Emerson, were about the same age. Mr. Beebe looked old to me because he acted old.
At this late date, it’s hard for me to have as much hope for the future as I did when I was Lucy’s age, and if Freddy seemed out of reach back then, it now seems as if he no longer even exists in my world. Maybe I’m doomed to play the part of Miss Lavish. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my days gushing on about my boyhood desires while pretending not a day has passed since my sixteenth birthday. If some find me foolish, then so be it.
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