You know what I mean by split-foyer, right? They are those suburban homes where as you enter the front door you step onto a small landing at the midpoint of a set of stairs that are directly in front of you; stairs going down to the first floor of the house and stairs going up to the second floor of the house. Each time you enter the home, the place that is supposed to be a refuge from the chaos and confusion of the rest of your life, you are confronted with a stark and unavoidable choice. Upstairs or downstairs? No chance for rest or reflection, you must decide immediately! If you don’t you will remain trapped in this awkwardly small foyer that is neither up nor down, and it’s not even big enough for a little desk to drop off your bag and relax for a single goddamn second!
But I digress, this is not a review of my life, this is a review of two magnificent films, The Royal Tenenbaums and Howard’s End. Both contain a large cast of expertly interwoven characters, struggling with family and love and class and loss. Each film circles around a particular home that means many different things to each individual character.
There is the House at 111 Archer Avenue: (I’ve Google Mapped it for those of you who want to visit the actual building. The real residents love it when people show up and try to climb in the window using the gate… like Richie does when he comes back from the hospital… so make sure to try!)
And, of course, there is Howard’s End: (For which I haven’t bothered to provide the actual address, because I don’t think many RAW readers will be near Peppard Common, England anytime in the near future. And really, if you were in the area, what would you hope to find if you did visit? A knocked-up Schlegel sister? Not nearly as interesting as the Dalmatian mice you are sure to find at 111 Archer Avenue. Remember… they love it when fans of the film show up and say hello!)
Despite the fact that discussing the roles that these two buildings play in these films would clearly be a rich vein of exploration, I am instead going to focus on the strange similarities between Eli Cash and Leonard Bast.
Eli Cash is a good friend of the Tenenbaum family. He has spent his whole life living across the street from their gorgeously intricate home in a cheap apartment with his mother. We know it is cheap, because we see a young Eli folding up the couch-bed while wearing his school uniform in an opening scene of the film, making it clear that this is a part of his daily routine.
Eli Cash is poor, but we know he aspires to be more like the fascinating Tenenbaums. The narrator of the film tells us he spends almost all his free time at their home. Royal Tenenbaum once asks him why he has his pajamas on in their home, and Richie explains that “he has permission to sleep over”.
His whole life he sends his grades, and later his press clippings, to Ethel Tenenbaum in an obvious attempt to find approval from the matriarch of the family. Though he has no particular love for Margot Tenenbaum, he has always sought her company and ultimately succeeds in beginning an affair with her. But it brings him no solace, nor does his ridiculous drug addiction, because he can never become what he most desires to be… a true Tenenbaum. So instead he nearly kills himself, with his face painted like the truest of American outsiders, high on complex cocktail of illegal drugs, by smashing his car into the house at 111 Archer Avenue.
Leonard Bast, on the other hand, is an accidental friend of the Schlegel sisters. In an attempt to better himself he attends a recital and lecture on Beethoven, only to have his cheap umbrella pinched by the oblivious Helen Schlegel. He follows her home and asks for it back. Which she gladly attempts to do, but even as she returns it to him she accidentally mocks it, and thus mocks him, in the process.
And so begins their awkward interactions with each other. The two Schlegel sisters discuss literature with him, and tease his affection for purple prose. They consult with the stately Henry Wilcox, and share his financial advice with Leonard. But as the Schlegel’s try to assist him they only end up leading Leonard into insolvency and further despondency. Leonard also ultimately engages in coital relations with Helen whilst boating down a river, which results in a shameful pregnancy for Helen. When this dishonorable act is discovered by his betters he is beaten with the flat of a sword and in the ensuing scuffle is crushed to death by a falling bookshelf in the living room of Howard’s End. An ironic and ignoble end to a life that had striven so desperately to share in some of the aesthetic nobility of the upper class.
Eli and Leonard, both spent their lives grasping for a kind of life that they were not born into… and both of them end up empty handed; one still ridiculous and in rehab and the other dishonored and dead. Can we ever become something we are not?
As for myself, I moved out eventually and have lived in many different apartments in many different cities. Yet still, each time I reach to open the door I think to myself, “What must I choose this time? Upstairs or downstairs?”… and then I walk through the door and smile at the architectural stark simplicity of every poor little apartment I’ve ever lived in. They have all been so small as to barely be able to fit even a little desk for my bag… and I am home.
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