Film

The Bostonians

Name: The Bostonians
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1984
Cast: Christopher Reeve, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Tandy, Madeleine Potter, Nancy Marchand

Drama

James Ivory's 1984 adaptation of Henry James's novel is a chamber piece about ideology, desire, and the cost of conviction. Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Reeve embody the pull between progressive activism and romantic love in Gilded Age Boston. Visually sumptuous but emotionally austere, it moves with the deliberate pace of a novel—demanding patience, rewarding attention.

TMDb rating

2.8

If you liked this

The Remains of the Day1993

Another Ivory adaptation of a James novel, similarly fixated on what remains unspoken between intelligent people. Hopkins and Emma Thompson circle each other with exquisite restraint across decades and continents.

But If you want plot momentum, this will feel glacial. It's a film about the weight of silence, not action.

Howards End1992

Merchant-Ivory's masterpiece about class, inheritance, and moral clarity. It shares The Bostonians' conviction that personal relationships are inseparable from social position, but with more warmth and a larger canvas.

But Ensemble casts can feel diffuse. This one rewards keeping track of who wants what from whom.

A Room with a View1986

Also Ivory, also James, but sunnier—a young woman choosing between comfort and passion in Italy and England. If you loved Reeve and Redgrave's tension, this explores the same question from the opposite angle.

But The romance is the point, which some find slight. Others find it everything.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Bostonians

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both films are structured as tragedies of wanting: the protagonist chooses ideology (or principle, or a version of self) over love, and the film asks whether that was noble or just another form of self-deception.

Lynch's film about two women in Los Angeles, desire and identity, and the stories we tell ourselves about love. Like The Bostonians, it's built on the premise that what people say they want and what they actually want are irreconcilable—and how that breaks everything.

But It's fractured, dreamlike, and deliberately obscure. If you need clarity, this film will frustrate you profoundly.

Brideshead Revisited1981

Granada's eleven-hour miniseries adaptation of Waugh's novel about class, faith, and desire across generations. The same literary density as The Bostonians, same willingness to sit with characters until you understand them completely.

But Eleven hours is a commitment. And if you're not moved by the question of how we're shaped by our backgrounds, it will feel indulgent.

Sense and Sensibility1995

Austen adapted with intelligence and genuine feeling. Like The Bostonians, it's about women navigating limited choices, ideology versus emotion, and the terrible clarity of not being able to have both.

But Period romance isn't everyone's register. The social constraints that drive the plot can feel quaint rather than tragic.

The Go-Between1971

Losey's film about a boy caught between two lovers across class lines, in Edwardian England. Shares The Bostonians' sense of ideology and desire as irreconcilable forces, and a mood of elegiac regret.

But Deliberately slow. If you need plot or emotional catharsis, this offers neither—just understanding.

The Europeans1979

Ivory again, with Lee Remick and Ruby Dee in a Jamesian story of American innocence abroad. Smaller and stranger than his best work, but captures his essential interest in what people want versus what they can have.

But It's minor Ivory, and Ivory is rarely a crowd-pleaser. It has the deliberateness without the emotional payoff.

Quartet1981

Ivory's film about bohemians in 1920s Paris, built on the same principle as The Bostonians: watch intelligent people make decisions about love and art and principles, then live with them.

But Ensemble cast, multiple plotlines, zero resolution. It's perfectly constructed but resolutely unsentimental.

The Patsy1964

A completely different approach—Lewis's comedy about a hotel employee groomed to replace a deceased comic star. Both films use performance and artifice to explore what people really want beneath their public selves.

But The tonal whiplash is real. One is austere drama; the other is vaudeville. The connection matters more than the feel.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles1976

Both films trust the audience to understand conviction as a form of performance, and performance as a form of truth. Both are slow enough to make you feel the weight of choice.

Chantal Akerman's three-hour portrait of a widow's daily rituals. It shares The Bostonians' refusal to sentimentalize—watching someone live according to principle, and what that costs, without the film editorializing about it.

But Nothing happens. Literally: the point is that nothing happens, repetition is everything. Most people will find it boring. Some will find it transfiguring.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles poster

Certified Copy2010

Both films are interested in the gap between what people profess to believe and what they actually do, and whether that gap is human weakness or human wisdom.

Kiarostami's film about two people—possibly lovers, possibly strangers—in an Italian town, talking about authenticity, copies, marriage, and whether any of it matters. Like The Bostonians, a chess match of dialogue in which people's stated positions collapse under scrutiny.

But It's deliberately ambiguous about what's real. Some viewers find it clever and empty; others find it profound. There's no in-between.