Documentary-maker Stephen Soucy pays a handsome, thorough tribute to the remarkable independent production company Merchant Ivory, a period-movie powerhouse with an intensely literary kind of creativity, comprising producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins.
It was a company which started with the bustling brilliance of Indian films such as Shakespeare Wallah (1965), whose depiction of a touring Shakespeare company in India effectively provided the template for Merchant’s vision of his own company: an extended family whose members should often accept his big delicious communal meals in lieu of payment.
