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Wednesday 
25 May 2005
R.I.P., Ismail
I am so incredibly saddened to learn tonight of the passing of Ismail Merchant. That we’ve seen the end of the great Merchant, James Ivory, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala collaborations, lush, literary, deeply human films like A Room With A View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day, marks a great loss in the world of cinema.
A Room With A View, in particular, strikes me as one of the few perfect films, and I make this claim admitting that I saw it in the midst of earning my English degree, a time when I was almost continually dwelling in the clouds of literary romanticism, a condition terribly consistent with exaggeration. I SO related to the character of George, played with incredible sensitivity and charm by Julian Sands, and spent so much time suffering the pangs of love, the unrequited variety, for a classmate named Gabrielle, Gabrielle of the long, curly strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes and white fisherman’s sweater and Levi’s, that I could never even muster the courage to say hello to her.
I understand that he was wrapping up his latest film when he died, that he and James Ivory were slated to make another soon after, and I have to wonder what Ivory will do with that project without his partner of 44 years. I don’t think I’d be able to work with anyone else. Sigh.
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R.I.P., Ismail
[Source: transcendental floss] quoted: I am so incredibly saddened to learn tonight of the passing of Ismail Merchant. That we’ve seen the end of the great Merchant, James Ivory, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala collaborations, lush, literary, deeply human …