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Downton Abbey III- The Grand Final: Successful farewells [critique]
For its third passage on the big screen, the saga created in series by Julian Fellowes, derives its reverence in beauty in a moving film which subtly makes dialogue yesterday and today.
Created in 2010 by Julian Fellowes (the Oscar -winning screenwriter of Gosford Park by Robert Altman to whom we necessarily think of), Downton Abbey evolved for six seasons (covering the years 1910 and 1920) in this sublime area at the heart of the Yorkshire where one could follow the daily life of a family of aristocrats, the Crowley, and the servants who served them. Two feature films had extended the end of their serial adventures. One in 2019 when Dowton Abbey received the prestigious visit to King George V and Queen Mary. The other in 2022 (A new era) where the action was partly relocated to the south of France in 1928. Two films not devoid of charm but which, basically, brought nothing more to the universe created by Fellowes.
His third foray into the cinema immediately appears with a completely different nature, of a completely different issue. Because, as its title suggests, it is the one that will draw the final curtain from the saga. A necessarily heavy responsibility on the shoulders of Simon Curtis (My week with Marilyn) already in controls ofA new era And especially fellowes so that this conclusion does not damage everything he has built over these years. And the result is a great success and by far the best film of what should therefore remain a trilogy. The action is located here at the very beginning of the 1930s to what we press like the start of turning in the Crawley where financial troubles like the desire of some of its members to spend more time in London make the future of the sumptuous property that one could believe capable of resisting all storms.
We find here everything that makes the salt of Downton Abbey Since its origins: the beauty of its artistic direction and the quality of its scenario, this chopped writing of characters and situations like the SO British phlegm of its dialogues. With this capacity, in just a few minutes, to re -situate the issues and the characters for those who have missed the previous episodes, to leave no one on the side of the road.
And from there, the intrigue located in the early 1930s will succeed with superb to play at the same time on the nostalgia to see these characters- and the world that goes with it- disappear and the refusal of the ease of “it was better before”, showing in particular in one of these most important sub-intrigues, the social violence that a divorced woman underwent, even- and above all! – In these high spheres where she had to be hidden or even expelled from certain evenings … so as not to compromise the other guests.
All this creates on the screen a mixture of emotion never forced (including in the wink of the late Maggie Smith which was one of the pillars of the saga) and humor with speckled flowers. Nothing revolutionary certainly but a beautiful classic film in the best sense of the word which closes the saga by making dialogue yesterday and today on a multitude of themes, without ever hammering things.
Of Simon Curtis. With Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Alessandro Nivola… Duration: 2h03. Released September 10, 2025
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