"Downton Abbey" as a movie: Cultivated inheritance dispute under palm trees

Every return to Downton Abbey feels a little like visiting the old grandparents.

In the past, people used to come here all the time, now only rarely.

You have the best memories, even if it sometimes crunched.

All have settled into their quirks and are treated with indulgence.

It's still beautiful and you enjoy it while you still can, maybe it's the last time.

Andrea Diener

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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But now: the familiar theme music, the familiar rooms, they've all gotten a little older, but wonderfully still there, no one is missing.

That alone is a small miracle after six seasons and two films.

Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay.

All actors were vaccinated and shot together in a large ensemble as if there were no Covid.

Only the release has been postponed, from Christmas to spring.

But it fits surprisingly well.

Dozing around in rattan armchairs

Because this film almost turned into a cheerful summer comedy.

Eventually, most of the family, along with the bare minimum of a dozen servants, head to the south of France, where Grandmother Violet (Maggie Smith, to our delight with more snarky comments than we've had in a long time) has been given a creamy-white mansion on a pine-clad hillside by the sea from a former suitor.

That's where the water glistens as Tom Branson (Allen Leech) and his newlywed Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) flirt around because Tom has finally gotten over the loss of Lady Sibyl, unlike us, but bless him.

Problem child Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) is finally rich, happy and full of creativity.

We are roughly around 1928, tennis is being played in cream colored clothing,

All in all, an excellent background for a few well-kept inheritance disputes and the uncovering of one or the other family secret.

After the thing with the Russian in St. Petersburg, we really don't put our trust in the good Violet, and so does her son Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville).

It's also quite enjoyable to watch how the horror of his own mother's machinations shakes his foundations.

So while lord, lady, daughter, son-in-law, aunt, butler et cetera cross the Channel with large luggage, the Downton Abbey estate becomes, in a nicely ironic twist, what it is today: a film set.

Even if Lord Grantham is so reluctant to have the library temporarily converted into a casino, the dilapidated roof can finally be repaired with the producer's money.

Daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery) promises to keep the local fort and the film crew in check.

She doesn't have anything better to do anyway, because her second husband drives around in his car somewhere near Istanbul, occasionally writes a meager little postcard and otherwise insists on having to go on adventures.

Myrna can't talkie

In the end, Mary holds much more than her position in the house, namely the whole film production, which not only suffers from the whims of capricious female star Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock), but also from the fact that silent films are no longer making money at the box office bring in more.

The thing is hastily rededicated to a “talkie”, i.e. to a sound film, which almost fails again because of the female star, because unfortunately this pretty-looking Myrna cannot speak at all.

So we're dealing with a kind of "My Fair Lady" initial situation, which, in the absence of an available linguistics professor, is solved by Mary stepping in with her cultivated upper-class voice and dubbing Myrna.

So the whole aristocratic fuss is still useful for something.

The huge house for embodying a semblance of stylish grandeur in an entertainment industry product, and the polish and upbringing of the granddaughter to sound good as a canned audio.

Even if the gentry's social importance is dwindling, the aura is still there and can be marketed profitably.

And as is the case when you visit your grandparents, you always want to know what happened to this and that.

Here, too, the film keeps us up to date.

Butler Thomas Barrow finally gets a happy ending.

Daisy matches her boss, the cook Mrs. Patmore.

The former servant and current village school teacher, the clever but somewhat demure Mister Molesley (Kevin Doyle), not only finally gets a kind of proposal for the hand of his beloved Phyllis, but also one of the funniest scenes in the film by far.

So it almost became a cheerful summer comedy, but the title "The End of an Era" gives an idea that a chapter will be closed and a new one opened, also in terms of personnel.

Yes, we will have to say goodbye to a character.

Yes, it's sad, but also dignified.

And if that's it with our friends from Downton Abbey, then this film is a good conclusion that releases you with comfort into a world without these familiar characters.

In any case, more comforted than the first, unfortunately somewhat unround film would have done.

Of course, the best thing of all would be if we found out how Mary's somewhat bleak second marriage was going.

After all, when one era ends, a new one begins.