There is a saying towards the end of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale that says much about why the show and trilogy of movies are popular: “The past is a more comfortable place than the future.”  The specific context is not that important.  As a practicing Catholic, I should take issue with these words.  To dwell on the past can be an impediment to growing closer to God, especially if it involves painful memories.  Is this made more acceptable if it involves history?  I am not sure, and I say this as somebody trained as a historian.  What I do know is that I loved the television series, and the movies have been just as good.  This also means that, now that we have supposedly been given the last installment, I will be left with the memories.  In many respects, this is about as good of a way of introducing this film.

One of the great things about this saga is that its writer, Julian Fellowes, does a wonderful job of re-introducing its subject each time, and Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is no exception.  Here, it is 1930 and the old, venerable city of London is being lit with electric lights.  In the theater district, many representatives of the Grantham family, owners of the title manor in Northern England, are attending a play written by Noël Coward (Arty Froushan) and starring Guy Dexter (Dominic West).  In the previous film, Guy had been at Downton Abbey starring in a film shot on that location.  Further, he had taken the Abbey’s former footman come butler, Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), to be Guy’s servant/secret lover.  The person not attending the show is Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery), the eldest of the Grantham daughters who is to become the mistress of the estate.  She is dealing with a matter that, in this day and age, is quite the scandal: she is being divorced by her husband, Henry Tolbert (not pictured).  For now, the only people who know about it are her family and their servants.  This is about to change the next day when the matter is printed in the paper.  The Granthams are invitees to a ball hosted by Lady Petersfield (Joely Richardson).  In the middle of the dancing, their hostess learns of the calumny and demands that Lady Mary leaves, a request made all the more urgent by the arrival of royal guests.  Lady Mary hurriedly gets into a taxi in order to depart, but not yet to her Yorkshire home.  The rest of her family, with their sympathy, go, but she stays to greet her uncle, Harold Levison (Paul Giamatti), from the United States.  He is coming in order to discuss the settling of his mother’s, her grandmother’s, estate.  He has brought with him Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), a financial advisor and friend.  Gus has come, according to Harold, in order to better explain the awful news that Lady Mary’s uncle has lost all of the Levison money.  Harold goes on to Downton Abbey a little sooner in order to see his sister, Lady Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), the Countess of Grantham.  Gus offers to stay behind with Lady Mary, and they proceed to get drunk.  This leads to further indiscretions, a turn of phrase that I would happily say is quite English of me, thank you.  While he is more open about the matter, she does not want anyone knowing, which is made more complicated when her personal servant, Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt), sees him leaving Lady Mary’s room in the morning.  Under this increasingly difficult cloud, they finally make their way to the Abbey.  The people of the area are also aware of her divorce and make socializing all but impossible.  The money situation is another matter.  Because Lady Mary had already begun projects under the assumed security of the Levison money, its loss means they will have to take measures that Lord Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), the Earl of Grantham, considers madness.  Even though it is a sign of the times for the nobility, Lady Mary’s notion of selling their London home to cover their expenses is not welcomed by Lord Grantham.  What is needed is an ally, and that comes in the form of Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the widower of the Grantham’s deceased youngest daughter, Lady Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown Findlay).  During a family dinner, Tom, Lord Herbert “Bertie” Pelham (Harry Hadden-Paton), the 7^th Marquess of Hexham, Lady Edith Pelham’s (Laura Carmichael), the Marchioness of Hexham, husband, and others agree with Lady Mary’s scheme.  Though Lord Grantham feels ganged up on, he eventually sees the wisdom in this course of action.  It is the first bit of bright news for the Granthams in a while.  The next comes when Lord Hexham learns from a friend while they are at the horse races that Gus is a conman.  Armed with this information, Lady Hexham confronts him, swearing him to silence on the affair with her sister and warning him that if it should come out, Lady Hexham will ensure that he no longer can do business in England.  Next, Lady Mary introduces her father to the concept of living in a London flat when they come to town, a foreign concept to him that he is still a bit reluctant to accept.  Back at Downton Abbey, Lady Hexham plans an event that will help her sister, Lady Mary, to recover some of her social standing.  By inviting Gus to come to Downton to relive where he shot a movie, Gus also brings Noël with him.  The fact that Downton is to have under its roof such a celebrated playwright has those who had previously turned down invitations to change their minds.  During the dinner, Lord Grantham officially announces that he and Lady Grantham will be moving to the dowager house, a sort of retirement home for those who once ran the estate.  The last piece of Lady Mary’s comeback is when she is called upon to present an award at the county fair, a move that comes with a lot of fanfare.  The final scene sees everyone saying goodbye, with a lot of changes being completed at Downton Abbey.

I could not fit all those changes into this review of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale because of the nature of the ensemble cast.  There are so many characters that have all come to be loved throughout the run of shows and movies, and Fellowes deserves more credit than I can properly describe for weaving them all together.  Actually, there is a better source for giving him his plaudits, and that is the film.  I am sure this was not intentional, but there are a couple moments when the characters realize the benefits of working jointly for the common good.  This idea spoke to my Catholic heart.  As I have commented in many reviews, the Catholic ideal of love involves seeking the good of the other.  This is what all of Fellowes characters do, especially the protagonists.  It is also not something with which they are blessed from the opening scene.  I could choose a few examples, but in order to fill out the cast a little more, I will talk about Charles “Charlie” Carson (Jim Carter).  He retires as the Grantham’s butler early in the movie, leaving this man of devoted service without a task for the first time in decades.  He does not know what to do with himself, particularly since his wife, Elsie Hughes (Phyllis Logan), is the Grantham’s head housekeeper.  He has trouble filling the time because he has come to think of himself as indispensable to the family for whom he once worked.  It is true that they had all come to love and respect the man they continue to call Mr. Carson, but they now have a capable new butler, Andrew “Andy” Parker (Michael Fox), who had been trained by Mr. Carson.  What Mr. Carson must learn is the need to let go, which would seem to contradict the quote I shared in the introduction.  What he ends up doing is taking the good parts from his time at Downton Abbey as the blessing they were to be happy with retirement.

What retirement means in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is change, and that is the theme of the entire film.  Many fixtures of the cast from years past end up in different roles, leaving the estate they had called home for decades, as much as Lady and Lord Grantham.  To this end, another quote comes to mind, this time in relation to Lady Mary taking over as the mistress of Downton Abbey.  She is told that there is nothing wrong when one chapter ends and another begins. Again, I want to relate this back to the words highlighted in the introduction.  The past is comfortable because it is familiar.  The future brings the unknown, which can be scary.  The Christian way of approaching these subjects is to take from the past what is needed to bravely face the future.  This is one of the reasons why I love Catholicism.  It is a religion that has as one of its foundational pillars tradition, which developed by consulting Scripture and God Himself over the centuries.  It has carried the Faith forward into the twenty-first century, and that is a strength.  Another way of putting that would be a comfort.  In a sense, Jesus prepares us for this sort of cycle by telling His disciples what will happen to Him during His passion.  He was not destined to be with Him in the flesh forever, but they were to remember Him in the breaking of the bread during the Mass.  Hence, the chapter of Jesus’ earthy life ends, and the new chapter of His Church begins.  Finally, by following His commandment in the Mass, we take part in that comfortable past.

What is also a comfort is watching Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.  Like these quotes I have been discussing throughout this review, I will have to begin a new chapter in my life without one of my all-time favorite series.  At the same time, I can always go back to them to touch on those happy memories that brought me so much joy.  Is that not what God wants of us?