‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ Offers a Fitting End to the Popular British Franchise

For many, “Downton Abbey” has been an eyeroll, titter, and muted whimper kind of viewing experience. From its 2010 debut as a miniseries to its imperial phase as a popular recurrent drama until 2015 and subsequent slight decline via cinema, the franchise has always blended elements of camp, comedy, and tragedy in its look at the aristocratic inhabitants and staff of a stately English mansion. No different is the latest, and supposedly last, movie, “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.”Fans know what to expect: the “upstairs” Crawley family will have to deal with some major difficulty, which mostly ends up being just an inconvenience, while the “downstairs” servants observe and serve. Patriarch Lord Grantham (Robert) will lament social reform and the family’s waning fortunes, whilst eldest daughter Lady Mary will collect admirers and clash with younger sister Edith. Butler Carson, mirroring his employer, will denigrate modern ways; attendants Anna and Bates will exchange loving glances, and cook Mrs. Patmore and her assistant Daisy will sweat as they prepare elaborate dinners. Other characters flit about, and every so often a devastating death or real historical event from the 1910s or ’20s adds weight to the plot, but generally this is creator/writer Julian Fellowes’s schtick. Set in 1930, the film starts off promising with a digitally enhanced continuous shot through London’s Piccadilly, from the heart of the traffic junction into a theatre where Noël Coward’s “Bitter Sweet” is playing. Members of the family are in attendance, as are some staff, though their seats are farther up. Soon we’re backstage, where onetime footman Barrow is ensconced in a dressing room with his partner Guy Dexter, an actor in the play. Coward shows up, says something witty, and the stage is set for an even campier foray into the soap opera that is “Downton.”Before one can say “Wit is like caviar,” some true turmoil is introduced. At a ball held in the capital, Lady Mary is asked to leave on account of her recent divorce. Mary’s status as a pariah lends real dramatic weight to the proceedings, and not just for the divorcée. The entire clan must contend with its social implications, as reflected in an early tragicomic moment when Mary and her parents cower under a staircase as Princess Arthur, a granddaughter of Edward VII, arrives at the function.A scene from ‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.’ Via Rory Mulvey/Focus FeaturesMary’s scandal follows the family and its retinue home to their beloved manor (the real Highclere Castle) as fresh distress awaits. Harold, Robert’s brother-in-law, discloses that much of his sister Cora’s fortune has been lost in bad investments, with the stock market crash of 1929 somewhat related. This leads Mary to suggest to her father that they sell their London house in order to maintain the Downton estate and its cottages. In one of the movie’s best scenes, a besieged Robert objects to all the indignities and acclimations, with actor Hugh Bonneville sympathetically epitomizing the aging patrician who finds himself powerless to stop the hands of time. Like clockwork, though, these character struggles and plots are soon diminished or resolved — so easily that one forgets their ticking seriousness. Mr. Fellowes’s chief interest lies not in examining generational friction but in crafting sentimental moments, clever exchanges, and absurd scenarios, such as when Robert is shocked to discover that other people may live upstairs in an apartment building. Further lunacy transpires when former valet-turned-screenwriter Moseley concocts a way to meet fellow writer Coward on his visit to Downton. There’s even a moment when Moseley remarks that screenwriters are “the real stars of cinema,” and one can’t help but grimace and marvel at Mr. Fellowes’s chutzpah. As the above suggests, one is apt to laugh at the goings-on and dialogue as often as one might laugh with the situation or bon mot. Amused and bemused, we watch the frequently anachronistic actions and presumptuous statements of the characters, and shake our heads in meta-disbelief when a character complains that no one knows how to behave anymore. In this muddle of history and frivolity, only a few actors stand out like Mr. Bonneville, or how Maggie Smith did in the series and first two movies. These include Laura Carmichael as intelligent Edith and Arty Froushan as an appropriately arch Coward. In the same way Mr. Fellowes balances out mentions of socialism and issues of representation with the assurances of luxury and old-fashioned values, viewers are hung up between two seemingly opposing forces: the wish for a more sustained perspective on the “lower classes” against the desire to have a bit of fun and bask in the high-toned milieu of the Crawley family. To that end, the writer and his director, Simon Curtis, whisk us “off to the races” and into a “royal enclosure,” while also taking us to a county fair, all gorgeously shot by cinematographer Ben Smithard.As ever, the hodgepodge of pressing economic and social issues begets the same frippery and the generic theme of “change,” which is spoken of so frequently that the franchise seems stuck in the era in which it began: the Obama years. It’s curious, then, that after so much stagnation in the “Downton Abbey” universe, substantive change does finally arrive as the franchise takes its final bow — during the first year of President Trump’s consequential second term.

‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ Offers a Fitting End to the Popular British Franchise

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