Until this film was made, "Brideshead Revisited" was sometimes considered the greatest English novel never to have been filmed, even though it is in many ways a prime candidate for the British "heritage cinema" treatment. The main reason, of course, is that film-makers did not want to compete with THAT television series, the one that is always talked about in hushed tones as a "landmark in the history of television" or "the greatest TV programme ever made", or something equally hyperbolic.
Well, let me confess my guilty secret. Although I love Waugh's novel, I hated the TV version (which appeared while I was at university). It may have been beautifully photographed, and may have starred any number of distinguished thespians, but I found it dull, lifeless and glacially slow-moving. Its makers obviously wanted to film not only every word Waugh wrote, including "and" and "the", but every comma and semi-colon as well. The result was that a medium-length novel (under 400 pages in my edition) was stretched into a 13-hour adaptation, at least twice the time television normally devotes to the much longer, more complex novels of writers like Dickens and George Eliot. So, unlike some of those who have reviewed it, I do not start from the assumption that this film can never compete with Granada's magnum opus.
The story is set in the twenties and thirties and concerns Charles Ryder, a young upper-middle-class Englishman who, while at Oxford, befriends the aristocratic Lord Sebastian Flyte. Charles becomes fascinated by Sebastian's family and Brideshead, their stately home, and eventually falls in love with Julia, Sebastian's sister. The two, however, are unable to marry largely because Julia's mother Lady Marchmain, a strict Catholic, objects to the atheist Charles as a son-in-law. Julia eventually marries Rex Mottram, a pushy, social-climbing Canadian businessman, but the marriage is not a happy one, and when she meets Charles again the two begin an affair.
The plot of the film differs from that of Waugh's novel in a number of ways (as one might expect from scriptwriter Andrew Davies, a man notorious for his penchant for sexing up the classics). One of the more controversial has been the issue of homosexuality. Although some have seen an implied gay subtext in the novel, Waugh never explicitly mentions homosexuality, and the more common interpretation has been that the friendship between Charles and Sebastian is purely platonic. In the television version Anthony Andrews was rather camp as Sebastian, but there was nothing effeminate about Jeremy Irons' Charles. Here, however, it is Matthew Goode's Charles who is slightly camp and Ben Wishaw's Sebastian more than slightly so. There are no explicit sex scenes between the two, but a scene where they are seen kissing one another on the lips is enough to indicate the nature of their relationship.
The idea of a bisexual love triangle between Charles, Julia and Sebastian, although not found in the novel, does in fact work quite well in the film. It explains Sebastian's breakdown and decline into alcoholism in terms of a conflict between his homosexual nature and the demands of his Catholic faith and his traditionalist family, the final straw coming when his close friend and lover abandons him for his own sister.
I was less happy with the film's attitude to religion. Waugh was a devout Catholic, and conceived the novel in theological terms. It shows the operation of God's grace on a group of characters- Charles, Sebastian, Julia and Lord Marchmain, Julia's father, who has abandoned his faith and his family and gone to live in Venice with his mistress. All of them have rebelled against God, and yet are finally brought back to Him, even against their will. This central theme, however, is not really brought out in the film, which omits Charles's own religious conversion at the end. Indeed, some (although not all) commentators have seen the film as critical of the Catholic religion, largely because of the characterisation of Lady Marchmain as cold, joyless, fanatical and destructive of her children's happiness. It is a strange state of affairs when a film based on a novel by a distinguished Catholic writer can actually be perceived as anti-Catholic.
The film is attractively photographed, but then it could hardly be otherwise, being filmed against backdrops as photogenic as Oxford, Venice and Castle Howard, the imposing Yorkshire stately home which is used here, as it was in the television version, as Brideshead. (Waugh actually based the house on Madresfield Court in Worcestershire, a less grandiose red-brick building and the home of his friends the Lygon family). The acting is mostly good, the best performances coming from Emma Thompson as the coldly aristocratic Lady Marchmain and Michael Gambon as her old reprobate of a husband. Nevertheless, I was reminded of the critic Richard Bentley's comment on Alexander Pope's translation of the "Iliad": "A very pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer". "Brideshead Revisited" is a very pretty film, Mr Davies, but you must not call it Waugh. 7/10
Well, let me confess my guilty secret. Although I love Waugh's novel, I hated the TV version (which appeared while I was at university). It may have been beautifully photographed, and may have starred any number of distinguished thespians, but I found it dull, lifeless and glacially slow-moving. Its makers obviously wanted to film not only every word Waugh wrote, including "and" and "the", but every comma and semi-colon as well. The result was that a medium-length novel (under 400 pages in my edition) was stretched into a 13-hour adaptation, at least twice the time television normally devotes to the much longer, more complex novels of writers like Dickens and George Eliot. So, unlike some of those who have reviewed it, I do not start from the assumption that this film can never compete with Granada's magnum opus.
The story is set in the twenties and thirties and concerns Charles Ryder, a young upper-middle-class Englishman who, while at Oxford, befriends the aristocratic Lord Sebastian Flyte. Charles becomes fascinated by Sebastian's family and Brideshead, their stately home, and eventually falls in love with Julia, Sebastian's sister. The two, however, are unable to marry largely because Julia's mother Lady Marchmain, a strict Catholic, objects to the atheist Charles as a son-in-law. Julia eventually marries Rex Mottram, a pushy, social-climbing Canadian businessman, but the marriage is not a happy one, and when she meets Charles again the two begin an affair.
The plot of the film differs from that of Waugh's novel in a number of ways (as one might expect from scriptwriter Andrew Davies, a man notorious for his penchant for sexing up the classics). One of the more controversial has been the issue of homosexuality. Although some have seen an implied gay subtext in the novel, Waugh never explicitly mentions homosexuality, and the more common interpretation has been that the friendship between Charles and Sebastian is purely platonic. In the television version Anthony Andrews was rather camp as Sebastian, but there was nothing effeminate about Jeremy Irons' Charles. Here, however, it is Matthew Goode's Charles who is slightly camp and Ben Wishaw's Sebastian more than slightly so. There are no explicit sex scenes between the two, but a scene where they are seen kissing one another on the lips is enough to indicate the nature of their relationship.
The idea of a bisexual love triangle between Charles, Julia and Sebastian, although not found in the novel, does in fact work quite well in the film. It explains Sebastian's breakdown and decline into alcoholism in terms of a conflict between his homosexual nature and the demands of his Catholic faith and his traditionalist family, the final straw coming when his close friend and lover abandons him for his own sister.
I was less happy with the film's attitude to religion. Waugh was a devout Catholic, and conceived the novel in theological terms. It shows the operation of God's grace on a group of characters- Charles, Sebastian, Julia and Lord Marchmain, Julia's father, who has abandoned his faith and his family and gone to live in Venice with his mistress. All of them have rebelled against God, and yet are finally brought back to Him, even against their will. This central theme, however, is not really brought out in the film, which omits Charles's own religious conversion at the end. Indeed, some (although not all) commentators have seen the film as critical of the Catholic religion, largely because of the characterisation of Lady Marchmain as cold, joyless, fanatical and destructive of her children's happiness. It is a strange state of affairs when a film based on a novel by a distinguished Catholic writer can actually be perceived as anti-Catholic.
The film is attractively photographed, but then it could hardly be otherwise, being filmed against backdrops as photogenic as Oxford, Venice and Castle Howard, the imposing Yorkshire stately home which is used here, as it was in the television version, as Brideshead. (Waugh actually based the house on Madresfield Court in Worcestershire, a less grandiose red-brick building and the home of his friends the Lygon family). The acting is mostly good, the best performances coming from Emma Thompson as the coldly aristocratic Lady Marchmain and Michael Gambon as her old reprobate of a husband. Nevertheless, I was reminded of the critic Richard Bentley's comment on Alexander Pope's translation of the "Iliad": "A very pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer". "Brideshead Revisited" is a very pretty film, Mr Davies, but you must not call it Waugh. 7/10