2 out of 5 stars
Since venturing out to the cinema a few times post-pandemic (or at least post-2021), I have realised the biggest hurdle any movie must overcome right now, is proving we should care about its release. Or better yet, care about its story.
When the first Downton Abbey movie came out in 2019, watching the wealthy take “turns about the garden” in their idyllic homes and fret about the queen coming to visit was a decadent form of escapism - and absolute catnip to fans of the five-season television show who longed to reunite with the stars of the Crawley household.
Three years later, for Downton Abbey's release: A New Era, the world – and the audience- are in a really different place. For one, we have seen Bridgerton, which, while set in Regency Era England modernizes a lifestyle and culture that the 20th century-based Downton Abbey gridlocks into a more traditional tone.
As a series, Downton Abbey pushed forward progressive storylines and attempted to wrestle with big ideas about gender roles and the responsibility of power, but the movies are a much blander affair having to rotate superficially between issues raised by their jam-packed cast. Audiences are also weary of what’s vacuous and non-consequential. We have seen a lot in the past 24 months. We’re a bit more world-wise, surly, and far more attuned to what we give our time to and how we prioritise it.
Not everything we watch has to be serious - as our love of Byron Baes and The Ultimatum can attest - but it has to matter. And an already wealthy family unexpectedly inheriting a villa in France and weighing up whether to accept it or not, really doesn’t matter.
Any moments of relevance in Downton Abbey: A New Era are in its commentary on changing times and enduring values. The Crawley family come from generations of wealth, tradition, expectation and a certain confidence in how they do things and how things “should be done”. Moving them forward and adjusting norms that have secured their position as aristocrats and upper-class influencers is a gargantuan task whenever its been attempted.
Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith) articulates what underpins this resistance so well, when, reflecting upon the course of her life: “looking back on those days, when I was just a girl, feels like being transported to another planet.” Her on-again-off-again nemesis Isobel Crawley (Penelope Wilton) replies, “It’s because you are, as is anyone who’s lived long enough.”
We don’t like change because we don’t like how it positions us. Our once-familiar surroundings feel foreign and who we are in them must evolve. We have to decide what values and beliefs we’ll retain and what one’s we’ll cast aside.
For our modern world, it’s Lady Mary who offers us the best piece of lasting wisdom. A few years into motherhood and marriage, Mary is feeling the ache of how her life’s played out versus what she’d imagined it to look like. Offered a chance to put herself first and silence that ache, she tactfully declines – as only Lady Mary can – saying she’s “old-fashioned enough to know what I want is not what’s always most important.” The sentiment is a nod to the feeling of duty that plagued Mary across the series, but also is a beacon of selflessness that our modern culture - at risk of increasing self-indulgence - would pay to embrace.
On the whole Downton Abbey: A New Era feels like a reunion with old mates who’ve decided to play dress-ups for the night and whose friendship - while loved – you may have outgrown. In the end, its success will ironically come down to the timing of its release and how affected its audience are by the “new era” they’ve moved into.
Reel Dialogue: What is the value of community?
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. - Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
One element of the Downton Abbey series and the films has to be how a community is formed within one family’s home. There are several characters to cheer on, but the only way that each can survive is by the care and support from the community around them. Throughout the Bible, there are key figures who have been championed in our culture. Still, all of them are only able to achieve their goals by relying on the community around them. Moses, David, Gideon and even Jesus are excellent in their own way, but see the value and need of the community around them to do their work. ‘No man (or woman) is an island’ is a proverb that should be lived out and is supported in the Word of God.
