My favorite movie

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I like it, too. I thought it was very moving. I don't know why it's not rated higher.

I agree that it's an interesting and moving movie.

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I completely agree with you, chevstriss.

Here are some of my thoughts on how Merivel makes the transition from vanity and materialism to humility and purpose:

The Merivel of the first part of the film says "I want bright things, decorative things. I am, after all, a creature of the new age." How does he change?

Stage 1: Suffering. Vain, pleasure-loving Merivel is cast out of paradise and seeks temporary refuge with Pearce. Sign at the door of Pearce's hospital: "Behold I have refined thee in the furnace of affliction." This heralds the transition, although Merivel still clings to the illusion of return. "I do not intend to stay for long", he says upon arrival to Pearce's asylum. Looking at his new quarters, he complains: "It's the size of one of my linen cupboards."

Stage 2: Curiosity, vision. He sees Katherine's madness in a completely different light: "Might that not be despair?" Here we see Merivel's greatest skill, his capacity for empathy, for seeing the "mad" as one of us, rather than as one of "them". More examples: Pearce says "only Jesus cures; we are merely his agents", to which Merivel responds: "May we not as his agents turn to ourselves, to our experience for a cure?" ...And:

"There was a time before when there was no madness in them".

And finally: "We might discover the imprint of the steps to their madness. There, just under the surface, there can be cures by dancing and laughter..."

Stage 3: Emotional attachment, and ultimately love, as Merivel banishes the arrogance inherent in the relationship between doctor and patient: [Spoken to Katherine]: "We will be watchful for each other". He also loves his friend Pearce, and that, rather than some airy ideology, is what draws out the noble qualities in him.

Stage 4: Inspiration. Pearce haunts Merivel's memory and conscience after his death. Even more, he becomes the source of his inspiration. "Be with me now, Pearce" says Merivel as he operates on Katherine. And later, in his diary meant for his daughter, he writes of Katherine: "She was the bravest spirit I ever knew". On Pearce: "the most compassionate was my friend John Pearce". [It is just after this comment that Merivel acknowledges his desire to return to the hospital.]

Stage 5: Redemption. (Humility, maturity and devotion). His vanity dissolved, he allows his patients to mistake him for John Pearce ("to honor my friend."). He encourages love and reconciliation between King and Lady Celia. He devotes himself to his new loves: his daughter Margaret and his patients. "The stars that once confused me seem now to light a path that, it is clear, I have in truth, been traveling all these days, where I met what came and have left behind my sorrows... and am traveling still."

Biggest surprise on seeing Restoration from beginning to end for the third time : Meg Ryan is growing on me. Her failure to put on a convincing accent still grates, but her performance has more depth than I first appreciated.

Favorite line: [When Merivel is trying to get Katherine to sleep]: "Across the sea in the Land of Mar, there is a valley where are kept all the things on earth: lost kingdoms, lost riches, lost hours, lost loves. The people go there to discover their lost days and lost deeds... and often they are surprised to come across their lost wits... simply because they never in the least missed them." [To anyone who doubts Downey's powers, just listen to the way he delivers these words!]

And another:

"I see, I see, all the things lost on earth.....But you cannot banish joy, for that is the road to madness...[but here comes that wonderful humor again:] ... and all this has come to me [says Downey disingenuously, with great wit] from the Lord....I suspect."

The highly skilled mixture of humor and serious purpose .

It must be extremely hard to write a screenplay that is consistently serious, thoughtful and funny at the same time but Rupert Walters has done it!
Examples:
Early scene with father:
Merivel: They come in bleeding, broken, suffering, stinking -- every color of disease, green being the most disgusting, and I am revolted. I am frightened.
Father: Of what?
Merivel: Their faith and my ignorance.....

[Merivel's father tells him to make use of his gifts]
Merivel: Gifts? ... Yes, my gifts. My first patient was a frog. I cured him of jumping. Now I can cure people of breathing. My gifts, father, bring me to dark despair...
...Our King is restored to us, the theatres are open, wigmakers are happy as whores, and rich men go to heaven again!
Father: Take the hand of your friend Pearce, Robert. He is the example to follow. He may dress like a crow, but he once infected himself with Scarlet Fever, the better to study the disease.
Merivel: Oh, in my own small way I do the same with the clap.

Merivel's father, Pearce, Katherine, even the King all are foils, prodding Merivel to "redeem his gifts ". Examples:

Pearce: "You have a gift for healing."...

"The light has gone out of your eyes."

What I do remember is how I witnessed the beating heart.
Merivel: Yes, I remember.
Pearce: You put your hand in and touched it, but I could not.
Merivel: I remember.
Pearce: And the other man felt nothing. Pray for me that I become that man and feel no pain

Charles II (to whom Merivel has just complained "You like me for my foolishness"): "I liked you for your skills. For then the two [skill and foolishness] were in you --light and dark. Now your skill has fallen away and you are one foolish quivering mass. "

"Some vital part of you appears to be asleep" [but when the plague comes] "All of us will awaken".

"What is taken from you is restored in return for the lives you've saved and the man you've become."

Haunting scenes:

[Man with the open wound displaying his beating heart]: (spoken to Merivel) "I'm beyond fear, sir... are you?" [evokes Merivel's dread of mortality]

Scenes of the plague!!!

Humorous scenes :

To illustrate Merivel's buffoonery, we hear Merivel's letter to Pearce, in which he says that the King is "particularly fond of my trick of farting at will": "I am Thelonious, King of the Winds." [brrrrp]

Downey's look of breathless awe as he gazes upon Lady Celia

Line I most identify with: "I must restrain my farts and do something altogether more constructive".

Humor involving portrait painter Finn and Merivel:

[Asked by Merivel for his opinion of Merivel's painting, Finn replies]: "It is an excrescence."

[Merivel asks if Finn received his commission from Robin Hood. Finn, glancing down at his green attire]: "Oh yes, my Lincoln green" [hnhhnhnhnhnhn... very funny snigger, or whatever that is, by Grant]

Merivel: My dear Finch.
Finn: "FINN!"
Merivel: "He has no interest in the painting, it seems, but for his continuing suspicion of cherubs."
Finn: "We are all pawns."
Merivel: "Prawns, yes."
Finn: "PAWNS!"

Merivel to King:

"He is a slow painter, Your Majesty. What is a painting without cherubs?"

Favorite King Charles line: "The Royal Tool is wandering about in search of her".

A few more words on Downey: there is an intense emotionality about Restoration times, coming as it does on the heels of the repressive Reformation, and Downey captures this feeling brilliantly. Merivel is brimming with mad energy and so is Downey. His "uncontainable nature", as Merivel puts it, is revealed not only in comic scenes of carousing, but in the way Merivel so often hovers on the brink of tears.

I also loved the way director Michael Hoffman evokes the budding scientific spirit of the times, the fascination with telescopes, dissection, architecture etc. Just marvelous!!! And the opulence at court... how much did all that cost?!!

My apologies for inaccuracies in transcribing dialogue ... I know I don't have it all exactly right.

A wonderfull movie all-around, one of the best I have seen, and everytime I see it it keeps growing on me! The anchor though is Robert Downey JR. truly one of the most remarkable and talented actors I have had the pleasure of watching over the years. I hope with the success of "Iron Man" and "Tropic Thunder" that he is back and that he keeps on the straight and narrow. Back when he was at his lowest point I used to think about what a shame it was that such a gifted individual should so waste himself in a meaningless and useless way. I hope nothing but the best for Robert Downey and continued success.

David Thewliss, Ian McDiarmid (Lord Sidious in "Star Wars), Sam Neill and my favouring, Ian McKellen, are so great in their respective roles! Meg Ryan is not pretty good and I had no problem with her in the movie, actually it was quite a welcome change from her usually cutessy roles.

Anyways an excellent effort, the music, the costumes and the sets so lush, exquisite and vivid...amazing, and rember that at that time CGI was not yet as prevalent as it is today.

"RESTORATION" is one of those movies that once you've seen it, it captures your attention and you keep coming back for more. Movies such as this one, is what has kept me going back to the movie theaters and not giving up on films, I just wish there were more like it!

"Today is the tomorrow I was so worried about yesterday"--Anthony Hopkins

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Enjoy it!
Does anyone feel that the sky is unusually blue in every scene..........cloudless,as in Riyadh?