Almost immediately the price of ivory drastically dropped and within a few years the illegal trade ring had lost its energy and the massive wave of poaching had stopped.
Adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, this Merchant-Ivory production strains so hard to portray dignified restraint that it almost seizes up with good manners.
There are currently around 92 ivory seizures a month worldwide, while the number of large hauls of more than one ton has almost doubled in the past eight years.