- How's your house?
- Ducie Street?
Much the same.
- I don't mean Ducie Street, I meant Howards End, of course.
E.M.
Forster wrote this novel, and it's set in London.
- "Howards End" is basically the story of three different families from three different classes.
- There are the Wilcoxes, who are sort of upper middle class businessmen.
And then there are the Schlegels.
- Yes, good afternoon.
- [Colin] And they come from a sort of more Bohemian background.
- And then there's Leonard Bast, who is a poor clerk.
- And the story is the interweaving of these three families and how they all relate to each other.
- [Margaret] It is a wonderful feeling, knowing a real man cares for you.
- It's a romance about unconventional relations, but also a tragedy about prejudice and the class system in England.
- What do you want to have me in there for?
- To help you, you silly boy.
- Why should you help me?
Why should I not help you?
- The most important location of the story is Howards End.
- It becomes a representation of England.
- The effect that this place has on Margaret.
There's some kind of mysterious, almost spiritual connection that she has with it that she can't quite explain.
I like the combination of having a classic book, you know, a period drama, adapted by Kenny Lonergan, a contemporary writer, an American writer.
- Once I got into really writing it, one of the challenges was to take the most human elements of the book and translate that into dramatic action.
There's always that double-sided thing of looking at another time period, where the fascination is both how different it is from the way you live and how similar it is.
- So I thought that was something that made the material so much more modern.
- It's a retelling of a classic.
- If you've got a wonderful script, and lovely actors and a wonderful director, hopefully it sort of plays itself.
- It's funny and it's sad.
Ultimately, we want people to laugh and cry and have empathy for other people.
(light music) (rain pattering)
