He was, as a dinner guest brutally informs him, an amateur, who should have left international relations to the professionals. In this he was not precisely evil he was deluded, short-sighted, easily persuaded by the pieties of genteel racism. The reality is that Lord Darlington, in the years before World War II, had great sympathy for Germany, and hoped to bring about a separate peace between Britain and the Nazis. So much of it takes place within Stevens' mind, and it is up to the reader to interpret what the butler remembers: To deduce reality through the filter of a narrow, single-minded man. "The Remains of the Day" is based on the Booker Prize novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I would have thought almost unfilmable, until I saw this film. And slowly we begin to realize that things were not as they seemed, that Darlington was not as wise as he thought, that Stevens was blind to the reality around him. Along the way, in flashback, we see his memories of the great days at the hall, when Lord Darlington played host to the world's leaders, and it seemed at times the future of Britain was being decided. "The Remains of the Day" tells the story of Stevens' trip to the sea, and what he finds there.
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