Catholic guilt
Brideshead Revisited takes another shot at bringing Evelyn Waugh to the screen
By Andy Klein 07/24/2008
Brideshead Revisited
Starring: Matthew Goode, Hayley Atwell, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Greta Scacchi and Niall Buggy.
Directed by Julian Jarrold.
135 min. Rated PG-13.
Adaptations of Brit novelist Evelyn Waugh have never quite connected with audiences on the big screen. Tony Richardson’s film version of The Loved One (1965) — very much a ’60s time capsule — remains the most enjoyable, but the sensibility of screenwriter Terry Southern overpowers the source material. Stephen Fry’s 2004 Bright Young Things was delightful but never found a substantial audience.
By far the best known Waugh adaptation is the 11-part 1981 TV production of Brideshead Revisited, perhaps the author’s most acclaimed novel. Despite the intimidating shadow of that presentation, director Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) and screenwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies have taken a whack at a big-screen version, with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw stepping into the roles that conferred stardom — and something a little short of stardom — on, respectively, Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.
Goode plays Charles Ryder, an aspiring artist attending Oxford in the 1920s, who becomes fast friends with aristocratic Sebastian Flyte (Whishaw). At Sebastian’s first appearance, another character dismisses him as a “sodomite,” foreclosing the possibility that we might interpret his gay manner as merely British.
Sebastian is, at a minimum, infatuated — maybe even in love with — Charles. But even though Charles is our protagonist and occasional narrator, we are never certain about his feelings toward Sebastian. Middle-class by origin, he is bowled over by Sebastian’s family status and, even more, his family estate, Brideshead. The degree to which their relationship is sexual is also a mystery: At first, the audience is left to wonder, “Are they doing it or not?” A half-hour in, the question is acknowledged, but the answer remains ambiguous.
Sebastian’s overbearing, manipulative mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) is an utterly devout Catholic; her sanctimony is one of several reasons Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon) has fled to Venice with his mistress (Greta Scacchi). Unsurprisingly, Lady Marchmain is worried for Sebastian’s soul, so she recruits Charles to keep an eye on him. But Charles falls from her favor as the increasingly tormented Sebastian slips into alcoholism. Worse yet, Charles, an unrepentant atheist, tries to court Sebastian’s sister Julia (Hayley Atwell).
All of this plays out in the familiar manner of tony British literary adaptations, in the Merchant/Ivory manner. But by being boiled down to a manageable two and a quarter hours, the story is uneven. More importantly, the thematic development becomes lopsided. (Actually, this may be true in Waugh’s book, if hazy memory serves.) That is, the Marchmain family’s Catholicism appears for most of the story to be a plot mechanism rather than the thematic center. But at the very end, questions of faith and grace are suddenly revealed as the very heart of the story.
For some viewers, particularly those to whom such issues seem arcane and maybe downright silly — yes, that would be me — it’s jarring. We’ve been swept along with the story’s romantic conflicts and melodrama, and suddenly it turns out that what it’s really concerned with is a theological argument from the Second Council of Trent or something.
The trappings and iconography of Christianity — most strongly in the form of Catholicism — are among the foundations of Western culture; there are innumerable works derived from them whose impact can be experienced by anyone raised within the dominant culture of America. (Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” and the Sistine Chapel are more than just A-OK by me.)
But Catholicism also includes elements that are, for non-Catholics, strictly from Alpha Centauri. I wish I could say Brideshead Revisited drew me into its struggles with faith and grace, but, sadly, I felt suddenly abandoned toward the end, as though Jarrold had inexplicably decided to have his actors switch to speaking Finno-Ugric for the final scenes. F
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT