But it also happens that, at the height of his busy retreat, three distinct clamors come to shake the foundations of his invincible lack of empathy: his good boss, that Lord Darlington, turns out to be an influential pre-Churchill Nazi sympathizer; the working conditions and health of the senile father require filial attention; and, most surprisingly, the mansion's no less serious housekeeper, Sally Kenton (Emma Thompson, with whom Hopkins will fight the titans in acting) will gradually try to find loopholes in the formalities of professional ethics to suggest a more intimate and deep that I respect him until he can no longer repress his despair. In his epicurean resignation against passions, Stevens feels that the unshakable integrity of his character was all he achieved in life by his sacrifice, and that it was precisely this attribute that stirred Sally Kenton's feelings.  

   Photography, music, script and James Ivory's masterful direction combine to ensure that its formidable cast knows how to say a lot between the lines. Hence few films with so many possible readings. I only have one uncompromising observation left, but that obviously doesn't detract from the film at all. Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, the narrative begins in 1954, almost two decades after the central events of the plot, when Stevens travels to meet Sally Kenton again and relive some episodes along the way. That is, who narrates the story in first person is Mr. Stevens, from a diary of his. What happens in the reunion, however, is only the insistent reiteration of his old and incorruptible temper, that is, the same temper that makes him incapable of opening up to us in that way, not only because of his circumspect character, but also for the simple fact that he does not having seen the events as he tells us. That he had found a confessor in a diary was perhaps the only concession he was capable of.