Julian Sands Tragically Sought a Hike with a View

Last January, L.A. radiostations announced that English actor Julian Sands had gone missing. A seasonedhiker, the sixty-five-year-old Sands had set out for a solo excursion near Mt.Baldy, the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains. In a year marked bymassive amounts of snow in Southern California, the search for Sands wasrepeatedly delayed. But eventually scores of volunteers hit the trail, lookingfor any trace of the missing actor. It was not until June that his remains werediscovered and identified.

 The sad news of Sands’ demiseled me to return to his breakthrough role, as handsome young George Emerson in1985’s A Room with a View. This screen adaptation of a work by E.M.Forster set the standard for the cinematic transformations of major novels, throughthe collaboration of James Ivory (director), Ismail Merchant (producer), andRuth Prawer Jhabvala (writer). This longstanding team, specializing insumptuous, intelligent costume dramas, was once a powerful force in the movieindustry, particularly in the last two decades of the 20th century. AsMerchant put it, “It is a strange marriage we have at Merchant Ivory . . . I aman Indian Muslim,Ruth is a German Jew, and Jim is a Protestant American. Someone oncedescribed us as a three-headed god. Maybe they should have called us athree-headed monster!”

 A Room with a View captures  theelegant yet repressive mores of Edwardian England, circa 1908. Its openingscenes are set in Florence, Italy, where a group of well-endowed  English travelers gather over dinner at a localpensione. The youngest of them, newcomer Lucy Honeychurch (Helen BonhamCarter), laments that her room lacks the promised view of the River Arno. WhimsicalMr. Emerson (Denholm Elliott) volunteers that he and his son will gladly swaprooms, but Lucy’s stuffy guardian, cousin Charlotte (Maggie Smith), isreluctant to do anything unseemly.

 Throughout the film, Lucy is tornbetween the wish to obey social norms and a youthful eagerness to experiencelife in the raw. Her chance to elude her chaperone’s supervision comes when shevisits the basilica of Santa Croce, only to find herself steps away from aviolent stabbing. She faints, but is rescued by Mr. Emerson’s strapping blondson (Sands), a young man nearly bursting with a strongly romantic temperament.From this point forward, George Emerson finds moments to express his ardor forLucy. This upends her Florentine sojourn: Charlotte whisks her back to herfamily’s country estate, where she tries hard to resume the life of a demureyoung English lady.

 Quickly there’s an engagementto Cecil Vyse, a supercilious English intellectual (Daniel Day-Lewis), wholooks with disdain on anything that might smack of impropriety. (He haughtilyscorns a delightful scene of Lucy’s brother and others cavorting in the buff ina neighborhood pond.) But inevitably Lucy will discover the need to rethink herchoice of a husband. The film’s ecstatically happy ending provides love,rapturous kisses, and of course a room with a view.

 Sands’ character is presentedon-screen as something of a conundrum, even to his loving father. Saved byfamily wealth from the need to choose a profession, he seems to live to revelin beauty in all its forms. His lust for life is distinctive, especially whenhe’s placed among his more prosaic countrymen. Obviously, a man is more thanthe sum of the characters he plays on screen. Still, it’s easy to imagine GeorgeEmerson’s life being suddenly snuffed out on a solo hike into the wilderness. Ihope that Sands enjoyed a wonderful view before he died.