Enthusiasm is infectious. For a masquerade ball sequence in The Golden Bowl , Merchant was the first filmmaker to get permission to shoot inside Lancaster House, a gigantic dwelling near Buckingham Palace, where Britain's prime minister holds receptions. It's a kind of civilized way of living with other people in which the most violent emotions are not supposed to come out. Because of this, there's an awful lot going on beneath the surface that must be suggested rather than expressed. Then tremendous upheavals will suddenly occur with little provocation.
Sharks leap up out of placid waters.
The best of their movies are timely, because of and despite their dedication to the past. Merchant Ivory and Woody Allen and Robert Altman, filmmakers interested in story and character, have proven them wrong. It used to be movies would be allowed to start small and earn more money the longer they played. Now the goal is to make as much money on opening weekend as possible, and to do that, you have to spend ridiculous sums on publicity, as much as it costs to make the movie. But for the most part, nobody wants to do the creative marketing it requires to find the intelligent audiences.