Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Jan 16th, 2009 by John Murphy
Directed by Julian Jarrold
Starring Matthew Goode, Emma Thompson, Ben Whishaw, and Michael Gambon
So…Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is one of the twentieth century’s classic novels. It’s not especially long. A week or so should do the trick. Don’t have the time? Well, there was a superlative miniseries adaptation of the novel produced by Granada in the early 80s starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, and John Gielgud. It’s roughly 10 hours long, but is an enrapturing experience. Too much of an investment? Hmmm…well, there’s a recent movie version that crams everything into about two hours….but you really don’t have time to at least start the book?
The new version might prompt those unfamiliar with Waugh to wonder why all the bother. The story is banal in this slick but slack adaptation. Middle-class aspiring painter Charles Ryder meets wealthy and flamboyant Lord Sebastian Flyte at Oxford and is drawn into the Flyte family melodrama, which is reduced in this version to the struggle between Catholic faith and personal freedom. Lady Marchmain rules over her vast roost, Brideshead, like God on high, trying to keep her rebellious twins, Julia and Sebastian, in line, according to “God’s will.”
All the actors, including the one-and-only Emma Thompson, feel like disappointing, underprepared understudies compared to their miniseries’ counterparts. Charles Ryder is a difficult character to make sympathetic, an agnostic (atheist in this version, another mistake: Ryder’s agnosticism is part-and-parcel of his general lack of convictions) social climber with a rather bland personality, and Matthew Goode’s performance is as dull as ditchwater. Sebastian is especially ill-served by the new adaptation. Ben Whishawh, who is by all accounts a very fine actor, seems simpering, self-pitying, and silly compared to the heartrending pathos of Anthony Andrews’ performance in the miniseries, and certainly lacks “that epicene quality which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind,” as Waugh describes Sebastian.
Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the faithful ten-hour television adaptation to this two-hour travesty, but it’s not just the details the new film is lacking; it’s Waugh’s entire vision. Waugh wrote that he intended the novel to “trace the workings of the divine purpose in a pagan world.” The screenplay by Andrew Davies (usually better than this) and Jeremy Brock flattens the novel’s shades and textures into a simplistic, two-toned face-off between faith and freedom. Lady Marchmain is made an imperious harridan, imposing her will like a distant god on her poor children. Never has Richard Dawkins’ contention that raising children in a religious household is tantamount to child abuse ever been more clearly dramatized. By demonizing Lady Marchmain, the screenwriters lift any burden of responsibility off the shoulders of Sebastian and Julia, both of whom have rich and complex interior lives (and a profound sense of sin and guilt) in the novel and miniseries. The relationship between Sebastian and Charles in the movie is reduced to unreciprocated homoeroticism, and an invented Venetian kiss between Charles and Julia drives Sebastian to a hissy fit and dypsomania.
Waugh isn’t just rolling in his grave, he’s spinning like a top. Even militant atheist Christopher Hitchens came to Waugh’s defense against this version, writing, “I do not consider myself a sympathiser with Roman Catholicism, but this film seems motivated by the cheaper sort of malice against it.” That says it all, right there.
You are so right. This film comes nowhere near the brilliance of the miniseries which was a landmark in television.