Nostalgic (Re)Visions of Englishness in Merchant Ivory’s Adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day (1989) by Merchant Ivory evokes nostalgia as a trope that glorifies the imperial past of the British through portraying extravagantly both the butler protagonist’s professionalism and his attachment to the country house (Darlington Hall), one of the symbolic places used in heritage cinema. In the novel, Stevens’ sense of nostalgia is presented as a sensual impetus or a blueprint to revisit the past to construct a more insightful understanding of the self. Analysing both uses of nostalgia in the source text and its adaptation, this article reveals that the Merchant Ivory adaptation (1993) limits its nostalgic perspective to depicting the idealised imperial past, and it does not evoke any dissident conception of nostalgia for the audience as the novel provides through its protagonist’s retrospection for the reader. Discussing the politics and contextual background of the adaptation, it concludes that Merchant Ivory’s film version of Ishiguro’s novel exemplifies characteristics of heritage cinema to convey dominantly conservative ideologies such as elitism and nationalism as common norms upheld in Thatcher’s Britain.