Brideshead Revisited

An adaptation must stand or fall on its own merits. The current Brideshead Revisited film should more fairly be billed as “inspired by" the 1945 Evelyn Waugh novel. Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies’ screenplay uses its characters’ names and makes shallow references to its larger themes. The emphasis here is a romantic triangle, coupled with a religious slam. Criticizing Catholicism is fair game, but it’s more effective when it’s less heavy-handed.

It’s World War II; Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) commandeers the grand house of Brideshead for use as an army camp. Flashbacks to the years between the wars unfold, showing the intrigues of his relationships with members of the Flyte family. As a middle-class student at Oxford, he is befriended by the aristocratic Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), the fun-loving effete son of the pious Anglican Catholic Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson). Charles becomes enamored of Brideshead, Sebastian, and Sebastian’s sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell) .The three travel to Venice, where Sebastian witnesses a furtive, longing kiss between Charles and Julia, sending the betrayed boy spiraling into alcoholism.

But Julia and Charles’s love is thwarted; Lady Marchmain’s religious views cannot condone marriage to Charles, an avowed atheist. Lady Marchmain’s Catholicism is hard; it has permanently scarred her children, preventing them from ever enjoying real happiness. Her unrelenting religious pressure even intrudes, decades later, on the dying moments of her reprobate husband (Michael Gambon). Director Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) is obsessed with paintings of the Madonna and child, leaving no frame unfilled. In addition, Julia sports a cross that shines with its own key light. Subtle this isn’t.

An old Oxford friend tells Charles, “There is no end to your hunger. I should have warned Sebastian and Julia; they are the prey.” Although Goode carried off the British upper-class air of entitlement in Woody Allen’s Match Point, he lacks the energy to produce similar results with ambition. Moreover, what do Sebastian and Julia see in Charles? Whishaw’s Sebastian lacks subtlety, until he’s near death. Atwell imbues Julia’s swings between heights of love and the destruction of faith with an authenticity lacking in the rest of the cast. Even Emma Thompson’s clenched-jawed fundamentalist, mourning the rejection of her son, leaves one cold.

Although the cinematography and music are lush, the film as a whole isn’t strong enough to stand on its own. Piggybacking off Waugh’s superb plotting, prose, and character development is the real sin.

                                                             Debra Griboff