The spectacular, enduring career of the creative team known as Merchant Ivory gets a worthy summation in the documentary of the same name, now playing at the Kendall Square.

The decades-long partnership of the trio — producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala — revitalized the historical costume picture with adaptations by literary lions E.M. Forster (“A Room with a View,” “Howard’s End,” “Maurice”), Henry James (“The Bostonians”) and Kazuo Ishiguro (“The Remains of the Day”).

At 96, Ivory is the sole surviving member. In a phone conversation Friday he discussed his late-career Oscar win for adapting the hit queer romance “Call Me By Your Name,” who was the sole “crazy” among the many actors he directed and why he now marvels at what he was able to put on film forever.

How is it to see your life condensed in a two-hour film?

“I was intrigued — and not in any sense dismayed. Because there wasn’t anything there that was some sort of surprise that I wouldn’t want to have the world know about.”

Does he divide his career as Before and After the 1985 “A Room with a View”?

“In a way, because that was the first big hit we had. We had other hits before but ‘Room’ was a really big hit.”

Winning an Oscar with “Call Me” at 89? He’s the oldest Academy Award winner ever.

“I have been nominated three times before but I didn’t win. Then suddenly, for this film, sure, who wouldn’t want to have an Oscar?”

A filmmaker for decades, he says, “I’ve been lucky. I never really had to work — with one exception! — with actors who were crazy or temperamental or unreasonable about anything.”

Who was the exception? “Raquel Welch,” the sex symbol star of their 1975 period piece “The Wild Party.”

“She was not easy to work with. She left the film at one point. She tried to fire me, Ismail, the cameraman! Threatening letters went out — and she was back on set Monday morning.”

As for watching his films, like he did last week with a 70 mm print of “Remains of the Day”?

“It’s the only way that one can really see the film that you made as it is meant to be seen. Watching I thought, ‘My goodness! How did I have the energy to do all that?

“I was amazed by its complexity and I remember certain difficulties and how hard it had been to do them, for one reason or another. I remembered weather has a lot to do with how things turn out. So that’s the way it was.”

“Merchant Ivory” is playing at the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema

(Courtesy Cohen Media Group)