I remember when Brideshead Revisited
starring a young Jeremy Irons played on PBS television back in 1982. The BBC miniseries based on Evelyn Waugh's classic novel was a huge hit and even spurred fashion trends. So when a new movie version of Brideshead Revisited
was released starring two-time Academy Award winner Emma Thompson, I wondered how it would do. Squeezing a novel into a miniseries is hard enough, but into a two hour movie? Hmmmm…
The story
Brideshead Revisited is the story of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), a young man of modest means but considerable talent and ambition, who has just begun his studies at Oxford University. He encounters flamboyant (i.e., gay) aristocrat and fellow student Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) and his flamboyant crowd.
Infatuated with his new friend’s hedonistic lifestyle, Charles eagerly accompanies him to the family’s opulent mansion, Brideshead, where he becomes entranced by the palatial 18th century estate. But when Charles falls for Sebastian’s beautiful sister Julia (Hayley Atwell), his friend reacts with jealousy and the siblings’ domineering mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), rules out the possibility of marriage for reasons of class and religion. As Charles becomes further involved with the Marchmain family, he realizes that at Brideshead, everything comes at a price.
The movie
Director Julian Jarrold transports us to patrician England in the 1920s using stunning locations in England, Morocco and Venice, and features fantastic period costumes and sumptuous settings. Like Charles, you do fall in love with Brideshead and the Marchmain’s decadent way of life – champagne, servants, and exotic travel.
Unlike the TV series, Charles and Sebastian are almost brazenly having a gay affair, what Sebastian’s father’s mistress calls a “romantic English friendships.”
It seems a bit unrealistic given the morays of the ‘20s and that the Marchmains were so reverently Catholic. Then again, Catholic guilt and his mother’s overbearing personality probably explains Sebastian’s decline into alcoholism and rejecting his family.
In the movie version, we also realize that Charles is not as nice as Jeremy Irons originally played him. While he probably cares about Sebastian, he’s using him to get access to the lavish lifestyle at Brideshead and eventually his sister Julia. After marrying one of his artistic patrons, he leave his wife for Julia and gives her husband a painting in exchange for an annulment of her marriage. What a cad!
In the end, Catholicism and the family bond draw the Marchmain clan (except for Sebastian) back to Brideshead and Charles realizes that he will always be an outsider to their world.
There are lots of threads going through this movie – love, religion, family, wealth, class, ambition, motherhood, marriage and sexuality. It makes for an interesting two hours and intrigued me enough to want to read the original novel and check out the Brideshead Revisited
miniseries again.
For a terrific take on the movie, read Louise Bayard's review at Salon.com.