This emotionally stirring, but thematically incisive social drama about the various interconnections among three families is the high point of Merchant Ivory Productions, if only because all the terms generally associated with such a film—stately, elegant, literary, arty, historical—apply, but always in the best sense. What is particularly impressive is how it maintains so well the issues of its day while keeping them from becoming frozen in time; the story is fundamentally about the social upheavals of England at the turn of the 20th century, but it enthralls today because its characters are so resolutely and recognizably human, rather than literary cut-outs (Blu-Ray)