(The following post contains spoilers about a movie that came out 38 years ago.)
The 1985 Merchant-Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View is lush and luminous. Who can forget the swaying fields of poppies, the gauzy white linens, the innumerable kisses in a Florentine window seat? (Joe Wright must have been thinking of this last kissing scene when he ended his 2005 Pride and Prejudice on a Pemberley plinth.)
Amid the airy and bright splendor, Daniel Day-Lewis cuts a dark figure. He plays the strait-laced, self-serious Cecil, betrothed to Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter). Cecil is generally a downer. He reads aloud while the others play lawn tennis. He delivers a chaste kiss while Lucy’s true love interest, George Emerson (Julian Sands), steals fiery moments in the foliage. Eventually, poor Cecil cuckolds himself, suggesting the Emersons lease a house in Lucy’s hometown. Before long, Lucy and George are back in each other’s orbit, and Lucy breaks off her engagement with Cecil.
But in a moment following the break-up, Day-Lewis delivers a wordless scene that goes straight to my heart. He and Lucy part ways with a cordial handshake, as bloodless as the rest of their relationship. She thanks him for “taking it so well” and disappears up the stairs, skirts rustling.
If the scene ended there, we might forget about Cecil as we follow Lucy and George toward window-seat bliss. But instead we’re left alone with the rejected suitor, watching him tie his shoelaces. It’s some tremendous acting from Day-Lewis. As Cecil stands watching Lucy disappear, his gaze slowly lowers to the floor. What is he feeling? Disappointment in himself? An acceptance of the inevitable? Relief?
Cecil’s coiffed hair glows in the lamplight. He proceeds with precision, pulling up his trouser legs as he takes a seat on a bottom step. We see now that Cecil is only wearing socks! Perhaps some Victorian households had a shoes-off policy? Perhaps Cecil felt at home in the Honeychurch house, enough to take off this layer of armor. But now he must leave, so he slips his feet back into shiny black shoes. Carefully, he reattaches his pince-nez to the bridge of his nose. Is he remembering how the eyewear ruined his kiss?
I’m overcome with emotion watching Day-Lewis perform these small adjustments. Suddenly, we can see Cecil as the boy he must have been. Grave and studious, perhaps wearing a child-sized pince-nez (imagine!). Allergic to fun even then, probably left alone for that very reason.
Everyone was a child once. There’s a reason Cecil came to be this way. Everything becomes clear in the dimly lit hall. It makes you wonder who taught Cecil to tie his shoes.