Taking this rather arcane story, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's award-winning novel, Ismail Merchant, the producer James Ivory, the director, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the writer, have made "The Remains of the Day," a spellbinding new tragi-comedy of high and most entertaining order. Stevens is a man of honor and dignity, which become for him, as for the intensely dim-witted Lord Darlington, fatal flaws. In his world he's the equivalent to Lord Darlington, someone who, when the chips are down, is to be trusted. Through a combination of hard work, long hours, denial of his own needs and carefully blinkered intelligence, Stevens has become what his peers would acknowledge to be a great butler. Or, as he says at one point, "It's not my place to have an opinion." As the members of his staff are expected to serve him, so Stevens serves his master, Lord Darlington (James Fox).
He's the supreme commander of a vast staff that includes the housekeeper, the underbutlers, the cooks, the maids, the footmen, the scullery helpers, even those people who work outside the great house. IN the late 1930's, in a stately home of England called Darlington Hall, Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) is the butler.
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