Maxance Vincent
It’s hard to say goodbye to anything, but it’s even harder when you have to do it four times. Yet, this is what Julian Fellowes has done, after satisfyingly wrapping up each narrative arc of his most popular television series with Downton Abbey: The Finale. At that time, many thought that the six seasons we spent with the Crawleys were over, even if Fellowes and his cast members constantly repeated, “Never say never,” about a potential return.
The series was too lucrative enough to end there, which is why there was a movie, released in 2019, that showed hardcore fans an even more hopeful path for the characters than the series finale laid out. Naturally, this would be the end, no? Well, the movie was a hit, so Fellowes wrote another one, which ended with the tragic death of Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess, and a happier conclusion for one of its most complex characters, Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier).
You would think that after such an exceedingly sorrowful movie, Fellowes would have nothing more to say. After all, how many epilogues of Downton Abbey can you write before you genuinely say that it’s over? Well, here’s Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, whose title is essentially their way of saying, “We mean it this time. It’s over over.” If Michael Engler’s Finale wasn’t grand enough, director Simon Curtis ensures that, by the time the credits roll for one last time, there will be nothing left to tell in this richly developed world anymore. At least, there won’t be anything to tell on the screen. Their story will continue beyond it.
For the bulk of The Grand Finale’s hefty 128-minute runtime, Fellowes’ screenplay has its characters repeat ad infinitum that the time they’ve spent on our screens, from 2010 to 2025 (as its end credits remind us), is over, and they are moving on to the next chapter of their lives. If this isn’t clear enough, Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) tells Daisy (Sophie McShera) that life is like a giant book, and that each chapter eventually has to come to an end before we open another one. And as silly as the metaphor may be, it was the first (of many) moments in this drawn-out tribute to one of the greatest television series ever made to make me cry.
All good things eventually end, even if we try to desperately hold on to them as long as possible. We are no longer children; our time in school has an end date. We build a fruitful career until we decide to retire. The family members we grew up with eventually move on from this planet, until it’s inevitably our turn. It’s something we hate to reckon with, because we’re naturally conditioned to live in the present moment. I sadly had to remember this recently with the passing of my grandmother, whose sudden illness made us recall how genuinely fragile the body we have is, and when the chapter of our life abruptly ends, how do we come to terms with it?
This is the central question at the heart of Fellowes’ coda, which might have bothered me in its clichéd ruminations if it weren’t so earnestly melancholic. The thing is, and this may come as a surprise to many of you who know me as a genre cinema appreciator, I ate all of Downton Abbey up. I hadn’t seen the series until the COVID lockdown, and watching it for the first time was the one constant joy for 52 days while the entire world was out of control. It felt like I was going through their harrowing (external and internal) experiences with them and sharing the same number of emotions they had as they navigated a world in turmoil, which begins with the sinking of the Titanic as the pilot episode opens, and wraps up at the beginning of 1926, predating a decade in movement.
The Grand Finale opens in the 1930s, as the economic crash of 1929 has brought about an era known as The Great Depression. The finances of the Crawley estate have been jeopardized by several mismanaged decisions from Cora’s (Elizabeth McGovern) brother, Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti), who arrives at Downton Abbey, alongside his accountant, Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), with nothing but terrible news. Worse yet, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), once-touted as the future of Downton, has filed for divorce, which creates a shockwave of scandal throughout the village’s close-knit community and spreads throughout London.
Meanwhile, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is still clinging to the past, as most of Downton’s revered figures are moving on. Butler Charlie Carson (Jim Carter) is enjoying his last days, training Andy (Michael C. Fox) with Mrs. Patmore, also training Daisy before she goes as well. Mary then considers the possibility of inheriting Downton from her parents, but Robert doesn’t seem ready to move on, or at least acknowledge that things are no longer the same as they once were.
What will happen when the people who have spent so much time in this estate leave the premises and enter the next chapter of their lives? Fellowes seems unprepared to give a straight answer to this secondary question, because he knows his audience are not fully prepared to come to terms with Downton Abbey ending, once again. After all, ten years ago, many thought they’d never see these characters again, as they ring in the new year and enter another chapter that we weren’t privy to see before the movie in 2019.
The fact that we were able to spend more time with them on the big screen, three times, seems itself like a miracle, and one hopes these sporadic stories go on forever, almost as if we’re checking in on long lost friends after some time apart. That’s what the previous film, A New Era, felt like, especially after COVID mitigations were dropped and we reunited on the big screen with characters who have experienced so much over the years and whom fans have developed a close connection with.
Truth be told, it feels a bit strange to see the show’s star-studded cast bid their final diegetic curtain call on the screen, so the audience can not only check in one last time, knowing they’ll be just fine without them, but also bid their farewell. I’d be lying if I said this goodbye wasn’t emotional, even if The Grand Finale may not be as strong as A New Era. In any event, nothing will prepare you for how devastatingly beautiful its final scene is – a look back at an epoch of television that will never be replicated in our lifetime again, as Mary reminisces at the time she spent at the estate, with her family, friends – and Matthew (played in the series by Dan Stevens) – deciding whether or not she should embark on the chapter audiences won’t get a chance to see, moving into an unknown future that will bring even more challenges, knowing what’s ahead in History.
There’s a metatextual approach to how the bulk of the movie is presented: characters we know and love give their farewell to the audience, and the characters they’ve played. None illustrates this more than the image where Isobel (Penelope Wilton) looks at Matthew’s grave with great sorrow, gaining the strength to do something that will ensure Downton will live on long after she has joined him in the afterlife. Time has moved on, but Isobel is still reeling from the tragic loss of her son. For her, time had stopped when he died, but she still carried on despite it. It also provides an opportunity for Wilton to say goodbye to a character who has meant so much to her – and to us, especially in the wake of Dame Maggie Smith’s passing. Their banter was a major highlight of the original show.
The baggage that each character brings, as they ruminate on the decaying walls of a house that has seen it all and will soon get a fresh coat of paint, will break your heart and piece it back again. When Thomas arrives at Downton for the first time since accepting a new job for actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West), he doesn’t enter by the front door. He returns to where he always was, with the people from whom he learned so much. When he finally has that realization and is happy in ways fans have always imagined he would end up like, one knows that it’s time to move on. And no character has had quite the progression, throughout six incredible seasons of television, like Thomas, beginning as our most hated antagonist until he becomes far more complex – and vulnerable – than we ever imagined. It’s only when he realizes that so many people around him care for his health that he begins to change.
While Michelle Dockery, Theo James, Charlie Cox, Lily James, Dan Stevens, Ed Speleers, Joanne Froggatt, Jessica Brown Findlay, and Allen Leech all had fruitful careers outside of Downton Abbey, Collier’s filmography outside of it has been woefully ignored, even if he gave the show’s most powerful performance. If anything, The Grand Finale tells us that it’s not too late to cast Robert James-Collier in your movies and television series, because his turns will always quietly take your breath away. While his presence isn’t the main point of focus in the film, he still makes the most of his limited screen time with an even more heartfelt last hurrah as the series’ best character, concluding on an even happier note than the previous film. No one could have imagined it would end like this for him, but all of us are happy it has.
The Grand Finale does try to tell some semblance of a story by bringing back Paul Giamatti from one of the Christmas specials and making Alessandro Nivola a shady villain with a hidden agenda of his own. However, despite Giamatti’s always-welcomed presence, the reflection at the heart of saying goodbye is far more interesting and emotionally impactful than whatever secondary storyline it wants to tell. But you’d also be unsurprised if I didn’t eat this shoddily-developed drama up, simply because Giamatti is having the time of his life with legendary reaction shots and his signature sense of humor that’s always in top form and adds a much lighter touch to a movie that deals with many difficult themes and moments of contemplation for its characters and, most importantly, us.
I’ll admit crying for pretty much the entirety of A New Era but maintaining my composure for the bulk of The Grand Finale (save for a few occasions), even if composer John Lunn’s signature cues got me a bit misty-eyed. That said, when the film concludes with a soulful lookback on the time spent at Downton, the tears flowed so hard that I saw it through a completely imperceptible puddle of tears, trying desperately hard to wipe them off before the sun-drenched final shot of Downton lingered in my memory, one last time, as Robert and Cora walk to their next story, unseen by us all.
So, yes, I cried, because I’ll always cherish this “chapter” of my life when the world wasn’t in our favor. The one thing that brought me so many strong emotions during a time of great uncertainty was Downton Abbey, and seeing its “for real this time” finale on the big screen felt like the proper conclusion before all of us wonder what comes next. We may not be prepared to ask this question ourselves, but since life goes on, it’s up to us to find out what’s in store before our inevitable goodbye…
SCORE: ★★★★
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