I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Downton Abbey when I finished the series (and the first film) during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, and I’m certainly not ready to say goodbye to them after viewing the second movie in cinemas, Downton Abbey: A New Era. The experience of watching it on the big screen felt like the cinematic equivalent of reuniting with old friends for the first time in decades and picking up right as we left off as if no time had passed.. Heck, if A New Era was 180 minutes, I wouldn’t have complained about it. Part of the reason is how rich the world is: we’ve spent so much time investing ourselves in multiple character arcs, and getting to know each and every one of them individually that it feels like we’re part of its extended family, as the movie opens and John Lunn’s impeccable score reintroduces us to the Crawleys and their life at Downton.
We reunite with the Crawleys in “a new era,” where “kinematographs” (as eloquently spoken by Hugh Bonneville’s Lord Grantham) are the talk of the town. Robert (Bonneville) detests the mere idea of cinema and the “glam” of actors, but after a film crew calls to establish themselves in Downton in order to shoot their silent picture, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) accepts, if only to use their money to replace the Abbey’s leaky roof. Meanwhile, Robert, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), Carson (Jim Carter), Branson, Edith (Laura Carmichael), and Lady Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) go to the South of France, after it is revealed that the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith) inherited a villa from a past love. None of these storylines serve the plot in any meaningful way, and if you’re looking for something deep and complex, this may not be for you, especially if you’ve never watched the series.
The original 52-episode show has so many complex storylines through richly written characters that A New Era feels like the “happy ending” many characters deserved to have in the series, but did not get. It’s a massive understatement to say that most of the protagonists in Downton go through hell, whether it’s the first World War, the Spanish flu, a fatal car crash, or even an ulcer bursting. It’s almost as if showrunner/writer Julian Fellowes doesn’t want any of the characters to be happy, but instead have a life full of misery, regret, grief, and sorrow. Don’t they deserve to be happy in this new era? That’s exactly what Fellowes and director Simon Curtis do for the next 125 minutes; making us see the characters, for one last time, be at their happiest, after all the challenges that they endured over the course of the series.
But there’s a small bit of misdirection to spice up the drama (which is extremely common whenever Fellowes writes something), which makes the movie a thrill to watch. Fellowes loves to purposefully hold out information about a character until a scene where the emotional build-up will be at its highest so that the actor’s performance can be even more effective.
For example, the most gripping arc of the series was Thomas Barrow’s (Robert James-Collier). In the show, Barrow is a queer butler who has always been misunderstood by his colleagues and the Crawleys. At first, the audience grows to hate him: he’s always thinking about himself and will purposefully torment his colleagues for his own gain until everything falls apart and he has nothing left to live anymore. And it’s in that very moment that we realize that all he wants is to love and be loved, which is all he deserves, really. Even after years of self-inflicted pain, Barrow deserves love, which he finds in A New Era with the arrival of Guy Dexter (Dominic West), one of the main stars of the movie. Their on-screen chemistry is immaculate.
West was a great choice to play a silent movie star, but those scenes act as a reminder that Robert James-Collier is one of the most underappreciated actors working today. The level of depth he puts into Barrow’s performance is second to none, and both actors don’t even need to say much. Their love is perfectly encapsulated in the way they look at one another, or how Dexter bites his lip, and Barrow’s eyes start to widen. It’s those tiny details that make the character so compelling to watch, and he couldn’t have been portrayed the same way by a different actor. I feel like Hollywood owes a collective apology to Collier for not casting him in more roles that fully take advantage of his acting talents. His tenure in Downton Abbey should’ve propelled him to star levels, but his body of work isn’t that impressive if you remove the series from his resumé. It’s a shame, but we’ll always have the show and the films as the perfect showcase for Collier’s brilliant acting skills.
Everyone else is superb in the movie as well. Golly, what a thrill it is to see Dame Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton’s Isobel interact with each other on a cinema screen. The Dowager Countess always gets the best reply (and the last laugh), and Smith’s wry sense of humor is as sharp as ever. Both of them are incredible to watch together, and chit-chat as if no time has passed from the first season to the new movie, even though the Dowager is probably more than a hundred years old now? It doesn’t matter, since it’s just incredible to watch them talk and further solidify their friendship. They both complete each other, and it’s rather charming to see them at it again.
Bonneville shares an impactful scene with McGovern, who has more to do in this movie than in the last one. Without spoiling anything, it’s actually one of the most heartbreaking sequences of the entire movie, before the downer of an ending comes on, and solidifies the couple’s indelible love they have for one another. Both of them are terrific together, and this feels like the first time Fellowes explores the couple’s intimacy, and the care they have for each other, away from the castle and their lavish lifestyle.
John Lunn’s score goes particularly hard during the film’s beginning, where the characters take pictures of themselves, signaling the new era we’re in. And then the castle appears and I’m a mess. That’s entirely because of John Lunn’s music: he can make everything sound oh-so-beautiful and pull us into the world of Downton farther than the acting does. The music actually did most of the series’ heavy lifting and enhanced everything else about the series.
The same thing happens here: the music reintroduces us to Downton and makes us go through all sorts of emotions seeing our favorite characters again before the plot even starts. But since the emotions are so high, we don’t much care if the plot is minimal.
It’s easy to appreciate everything about the movie, even if we know that the meta-commentary on the state of filmmaking is all plucked out of Singin’ in the Rain, in a time when silent movies killed many actors’ careers once talkies became the thing. Fellowes doesn’t even hide it: Laura Haddock’s Myrna Dalgleish is the British version of Lina Lamont from Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s film. It’s a rather uninspired bit, sure, but seeing the process of a film being made in front of the Dowager’s eyes, or Molesley (Kevin Doyle) lighting up when he finds his newfound passion in screenwriting more than makes up for everything we’ve seen before in better movies. It’s the smallest details (Violet and Isobel jumping whenever Hugh Dancy’s Jack Barber yells “action!” or whenever a character pops up impromptu while they’re filming) that make those scenes fun to watch.
And I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to them once again as the movie started to wrap up. This is the kind of franchise that really milks its goodbyes, but I didn’t want to let go again. Being swept up by the film’s superb performances, rousing score, and razor-sharp writing from Fellowes took me back to the days when I was glued to my TV screen, two years ago, binging Downton Abbey and being obsessed with every single aspect of it. I started watching it because I had nothing better to do – everything was closed and we were all ordered to stay home. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but one that completely changed the way I perceived screenwriting. Fellowes’ script doesn’t reach the same levels as the series, but it didn’t really matter. I was so overwhelmed by the fact that I was watching a Downton Abbey movie on the big screen that my body started to melt away in awe. And if they are going to make a third film, I am not opposed to it one bit. Give me all the Downton Abbey content. I will watch it all. This is my Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I hope I won’t be leaving Downton for very long again.
