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The Remains of the Day

The sheer number of Academy Awards that this film was nominated for – eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress – are testimony to its greatness. Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-winning novel, The Remains of the Day tells the story of two ‘downstairs’ staff members, Stevens, a butler played by Anthony Hopkins, and Miss Kenton, a housekeeper played by Emma Thompson, who are reunited twenty years after working together during the Second World War. Through flashbacks, we see that the two formed an attachment, although Stevens was too stiff and cold to recognise it as such, preferring instead to do his duty to his master, Lord Darlington. This despite the fact that Darlington was a Nazi sympathiser, whose politics Stevens himself disagreed with, but who felt he could not go against. When they finally meet again, Stevens is determined to right the wrongs of the past – but is he too late?