I suspect that doing justice to the movie Brideshead Revisited without having read Evelyn Waugh's book is just about as impossible as enjoying that first taste of grouse that has been hanging to ripen longer than we'd like to know. I haven't read the book and, while I have the television series on DVD, I've never gotten around to watching it. Still, I enjoy watching movies and reading critical opinions of great literature...it's so much less demanding than reading the originals.
For my money, the movie of Brideshead Revisited is a gallant and conscientious...not failure, exactly, but at least a strangely uninvolving, beautifully mounted melodrama set amongst the tiresomely wealthy and privileged English very upper class. The failure in the movie, in my opinion, was the failure to establish just how obsessed Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) became with the building that was Brideshead and then the life of beauty and casual, privileged style that it represented. Without that obsession, how else to explain a continuing, friendly, sexual relationship with Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), a scrawny, drunken, self- pitying twig from the Marchmain family tree, and a continuing, friendly, sexual relationship with the twig's cool sister, Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell), a woman whom many would consider, without the prospects of a fortune attached to her, not worth the effort. Whishaw and Atwell did fine work, but physically, for me, lacked the attractiveness and charisma that might have made them interesting even if they had been a banker's assistant and a tea room waitress.
That leaves us with Lady Marchmain, with Emma Thompson, and with Lady Marchmain's fearful brand of righteous piety. Thompson gives a performance that justifies the movie. Lady Marchmain is a woman totally secure in her position and in her Catholic faith. That she is ruining the lives of her children is not something she is aware of; she is saving their souls by saving their faith for them. Her certitude and gimlet faith would give respectability to an Inquisition judge or a sweating television evangelist. Yet in this movie the contest between Lady Marchmain's rigid faith and Charles Ryder's atheism is not much more than mildly interesting. There's just not enough time, in my opinion, to dwell on this essential fact of life in Brideshead Revisited. What time there is, however, helps make sense of the movie because of Emma Thompson's wonderful performance.
I left Brideshead Revisited still clutching my love of Britain exemplified by its history, by Masterpiece Theatre, by Inspector Morse and by those wonderfully made umbrellas that cost a small fortune to buy in London. My encounter with Charles Ryder who, in my view, is essentially an opportunist, left mixed feelings. My encounter with the Marchmain clan left me impatient and a little contemptuous. Waugh is supposed to have said that he doubted if six Americans could understand Brideshead Revisited. He just may be right.
I think the movie is worth seeing because it's such a serious effort. Trying to cram Waugh's point of view into little more than two hours was probably too ambitious. However, I left the theater determined to read the book.
For my money, the movie of Brideshead Revisited is a gallant and conscientious...not failure, exactly, but at least a strangely uninvolving, beautifully mounted melodrama set amongst the tiresomely wealthy and privileged English very upper class. The failure in the movie, in my opinion, was the failure to establish just how obsessed Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) became with the building that was Brideshead and then the life of beauty and casual, privileged style that it represented. Without that obsession, how else to explain a continuing, friendly, sexual relationship with Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), a scrawny, drunken, self- pitying twig from the Marchmain family tree, and a continuing, friendly, sexual relationship with the twig's cool sister, Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell), a woman whom many would consider, without the prospects of a fortune attached to her, not worth the effort. Whishaw and Atwell did fine work, but physically, for me, lacked the attractiveness and charisma that might have made them interesting even if they had been a banker's assistant and a tea room waitress.
That leaves us with Lady Marchmain, with Emma Thompson, and with Lady Marchmain's fearful brand of righteous piety. Thompson gives a performance that justifies the movie. Lady Marchmain is a woman totally secure in her position and in her Catholic faith. That she is ruining the lives of her children is not something she is aware of; she is saving their souls by saving their faith for them. Her certitude and gimlet faith would give respectability to an Inquisition judge or a sweating television evangelist. Yet in this movie the contest between Lady Marchmain's rigid faith and Charles Ryder's atheism is not much more than mildly interesting. There's just not enough time, in my opinion, to dwell on this essential fact of life in Brideshead Revisited. What time there is, however, helps make sense of the movie because of Emma Thompson's wonderful performance.
I left Brideshead Revisited still clutching my love of Britain exemplified by its history, by Masterpiece Theatre, by Inspector Morse and by those wonderfully made umbrellas that cost a small fortune to buy in London. My encounter with Charles Ryder who, in my view, is essentially an opportunist, left mixed feelings. My encounter with the Marchmain clan left me impatient and a little contemptuous. Waugh is supposed to have said that he doubted if six Americans could understand Brideshead Revisited. He just may be right.
I think the movie is worth seeing because it's such a serious effort. Trying to cram Waugh's point of view into little more than two hours was probably too ambitious. However, I left the theater determined to read the book.