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44 out of 51 people found the following comment useful :-
"Brideshead Revisited" revisited, 23 July 2008

Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Those who have not seen the 1981 Granada television miniseries about the aristocratic English Catholic Marchmain family, their spiritual torments, and their conflicted friend, Charles Ryder, may be at an advantage in watching this new adaptation. That series was superb and took the time to do more than justice to the satirical Evelyn Waugh's uncharacteristically solemn and lengthy 1945 novel. This film version, much briefer than the miniseries but not exactly short at 135 minutes, has one advantage: it shows off the plot in sharp outline.

The miniseries may actually blur that basic element. It was hypnotic, rolling on from week to week for those who first saw it gathering an accumulation of nostalgia and melancholy, beautifully mounted and graced by the likes of John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, and Stéphane Audran. It also put Jeremy Irons on the map in the central role of Charles, and by his own admission made him "fall out of love with jeans" through wearing the elegant clothes of a well-turned-out young man of the 1920's. The miniseries can take the time to develop important minor characters. The book is an elaborate portrait of a generation and an era. Waugh wrote short witty novels mostly. But this time, writing about wealth and grandeur and Catholicism, he waxes poetic and goes into near-Proustian detail.

Sebastian's grand family draws the awestruck middle-class Charles in and eventually spits him out, leaving him shattered, but lastingly impressed by the power of the Marchmains' Catholic faith. As the tale opens (in all versions), he's reminiscing about it all much later as an army officer at the end of World War II ironically posted at Brideshead, the glorious estate where Sebastian grew up--a place Charles came to know intimately even though it was never fully accessible to him.

Maybe Waugh in his novel was more concerned with the nostalgia for a prewar life he imagined as splendid and carefree, for a class to which he aspired, and more self-consciously dwelling on his infatuation with Catholicism, to which he was a convert. But the story, as we see in this new film, turns on a kind of love triangle--one heavy-laden with sexual and spiritual conflict.

Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) enter into an intense romantic and alcoholic friendship when Charles comes for his first year at Oxford. The film carries this a bit further than either the novel or the TV version, showing the two handsome young men not only often affectionately and playfully arm in arm but in an intimate bathroom scene and once, anyway, sharing a lingering drunken kiss. This despite the fact that a relative sternly warned Charles to avoid "sodomites" when he first arrived at university. Whishaw (of 'Perfume' and 'I'm Not There') has a touching, wispy, vulnerable quality that distinguishes him from the TV Anthony Andrews, whose Sebastian is more brassy, slick, confident and social. When Charles meets Sebastian's sister Julia (Hayley Atwall in the film; the impossibly elegant Diana Quick in the miniseries), and lights a cigarette for her in a car, he immediately hears, in the words of the novel, echoed in the TV narration, "a thin bat's squeak of sexuality," and the equation changes. He begins to desire Julia. Apart from her unmistakable allure she's a way for Charles to possess the Marchmain world more completely. This, especially in the film, immediately clouds the relationship with Sebastian, who grows cold, and simultaneously sinks deeper into dipsomania.

In the miniseries there is more time for Charles's profound infatuation with his aristocratic young Catholic friend and his magnificent world to sink in and for Sebastian's decline into alcoholism to unwind with slow, horrible inevitability. The latter is memorably described in the book (repeated in the TV narration) as feeling like "a blow, expected, repeated, falling on a bruise, with no smart or shock of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another one like it could be borne." It has to be rushed a bit in the film. But the process isn't falsified, only made more clear.

Their mother, Lady Marchmain (film, Emma Thompson; TV, Claire Bloom) at first finds Charles sensible and polite, a good influence for the dissolute and sexually wayward Sebastian. But she can't bend Charles to her will. It emerges that Lord Marchmain (film, Michael Gambon; TV, Laurence Olivier) has long ago fled from his wife's control to Venice and lives with a mistress, Cara (film, Greta Schacchi; TV, Stéphane Audran). A visit to Venice leads to kisses with Julia and also introduces Charles to another equally intoxicating kind of beauty--besides which in Italy, everybody's Catholic, but as Cara points out, of a more relaxed sort than the cloying Lady Marchmain's. Charles can't have Julia as long as Lady Marchmain is around. As circumstances turn out, their idyll is brief, and happens after Charles is married and a successful painter. Sebastian has wound up with a weak German man in Morocco, in terrible health, a saintly drunkard. Julia and Lord Marchmain have last minute returns to their faith and Charles is left out in the cold.

Viewing all three versions, book, TV, screen, one sees the story isn't about Charles or about anybody really. It's about temptation. It's about the world between the wars, through eyes clouded by longing. The adaptation is very creditable. It shows the appeal of the story. Those who are entranced by it ought to read Waugh's book and rent DVD's of the Granada miniseries--which was about the best thing ever done for television. It delivers long passages from the book verbatim. Waugh was best in his short witty early satires but he turns many a good phrase in this, his most popular (and for a while his own favorite) book. Then he rejected it, and one can see why. Its sentimentality is so unlike him at his best. But it adapts well.

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39 out of 56 people found the following comment useful :-
It's not Brideshead Revisited, 27 July 2008

Author: morrowmmm from Los Angeles

The greatness of the original Brideshead Revisited was in the luxury of being able to transpose a very complicated emotional and intellectual book into words. It succeeded in this, but only just, due to superb direction, photography and script which, even in its sparseness, only just allowed the successful transition to film. The problem with anything shorter is that, if it took Mortimer so many episodes to get it right, then there are very few writers who could even get near in under 4 hours, if that. So lets stop beating about the bush. This is a sound reproduction of the calender plot but after that it is not Brideshead Revisited. Call it by another name and I will laud it. It brings in a strong homosexual element and a early sexual attraction between Charles Ryder and Miss Flyte. With that everything becomes unbalanced. Motivations change. The beauty of the original is that it hinted at ????something (a je ne sais quoi) and it was that and the ever strengthening Catholic awareness of family that made this film so fascinating. The original's masterpiece was the script supported by the cine photography. That has been lost. But taken as is, a pretty and interesting film which seems to be loosely based on an early fifties work by Waugh.

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34 out of 54 people found the following comment useful :-
Brideshead . . . Revised? Brideshead . . . Reviled? Definitely NOT Brideshead Revisited, 7 August 2008

Author: Michael Morad-McCoy (mmckaibab) from Albuquerque, NM

Here is the ultimate definition of cowardice. Mr. Jarrold apparently wanted to make a period piece but didn't have the courage to actually write his own stuff from scratch, so he stole character names and isolated scenes from Evelyn Waugh's classic, then superimposed his own much less interesting, much more banal story. The crime is that the Waugh estate allowed this piece of tripe to be released under the name "Brideshead Revisited."

How far does this thing go from the original? Well, let's see. Waugh wrote a profound meditation on the power of memory, the inevitable tragedies of life and love, and the mystery of faith. Jarrold gives us a not-very-titillating bisexual love triangle with a pasted on last reel reveal of the main character's shallow motivation. Waugh's characters were rich, multi-layered creations. Jarrold's are plasticine clichés with no depth, no recognizable motivation, and no growth . . . hell, they don't even age. In the 15 or so years in which Jarrold sets his story his characters look EXACTLY the same at the end as they did at the beginning.

One has to wonder what Jarrold was thinking If he didn't want to make something even remotely resembling Waugh's work, why use its title and steal a handful of its scenes? Was it just that he didn't think he could sell "Last Love Triangle in 1920s Venice?"

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
An Unbiased Review of Brideshead, 22 August 2008

Author: Mr.Q Pettyhands from United States

I have never read the book or seen the miniseries, so my experience wasn't clouded by already existing expectations and assumptions of the characters. Instead I was awaiting a first, and therefore unbiased look into the world of Brideshead.

As a film, it is okay bordering on good and solid. The performances are strong enough to keep the audience interested, but they do not keep us enthralled. The leads are savvy and sexy in their own rights, but they lack true appeal as performers. They can come off as rather dull in certain scenes, but in others they pull out a subtle presence that is called for in intimate, or more emotion scenes. This inconsistence was bothersome and hindered the overall telling of the story. The one presence that is felt, but is far too short is that of Emma Thompson. As the matriarchal head of the family, she is brutal and works well with the one dimensional writing she was given. If they had focused more on her, we would have been able to understand the tortured minds of Julia and Sebastian better. Instead they have Julia and Sebastian describe her to the audience, which keeps us from getting close enough to realize what deformed her mind to begin with.

Charles is, at times to weak and unsure to be accepted as someone we want to see happy. We end up being unsure of his character's intention, and not in a mysterious, purposeful way, but in a, "the film-making is too unclear" way. Is Charles just a social climber whose dreams are dashed by his wants and Atheist ways? Or is he a moral soul lost in the pull of Brideshead's condemning Catholic trappings? This is the major flaw to the film, Charles is never exposed.

Small framing problems and out-of-style shots hampered the visual appeal, but with that aside, the visuals are very lush and the score complements some well placed montages to give the viewer a true sense of the desired never-ending summer Charles and Sebastian so desperately dream after.

If you like British tales of class and religion, or period films, this one is not a letdown. It is nothing new, but nothing terrible either. I recommend it if this is your sort of thing, I was not disappointed, but I wasn't blown away.

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14 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Read the book, saw the miniseries, LOVED THE FILM!, 10 August 2008

Author: Kristina Soliz from Austin, TX

I thought it was a damn good adaptation of the novel as well as the miniseries. Not that it's supposed to draw from the miniseries, but much of the film was a lot similar. The acting was fairly good...Thompson scared the hell out of me and Goode is in his finest yet. Beautiful cinematography and excellent script. Those of you who are just bitching about the gay issue...it's not going to be attacked straight on. It's the type of thing that exists in the film but no one's gonna talk about it. There are plenty of sweet moments between Sebastian and Charles, but if you are looking for a Brokeback Mountain type of action, then this ain't for you. Pretty decent flick...worth the price of a ticket and perhaps a second look.

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20 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Once More, Into Brideshead, 1 August 2008

Author: janos451 from San Francisco

It's attributed to just about everybody - from Ginger Rogers to Milan Kundera - and it sounds so right: "There are no small parts, only small actors."

If you want proof and a real understanding of the adage, revisit "Brideshead Revisited," and behold the miracle of Emma Thompson's Lady Marchmain, sucking the life out of anything and anybody she touches, and Michael Gambon's delightfully dissolute Lord Marchmain. She has about 10 minutes on the screen, he perhaps four, and yet their characters will follow you out of the theater, and stay with you at length.

Thompson's work is especially dazzling because the mean, sanctimonious character is so clearly alien to the actress (in fact, I suspected miscasting when I first heard of her assignment) and also as the character is so exaggerated, almost a caricature. And yet, Thompson gives the challenge her all, and walks away with it; the performance has Best Supporting Actress written all over it.

It's difficult to believe that the man you see as Marchmain is the same actor who was the "Singing Detective" (of the superb BBC series, not the Robert Downey Jr. mishap). Gambon has a range as wide as all outdoors, and you never ever see effort in the performance. His amiable Marchmain - subtly hinting at a complex character under the surface - has a physical similarity to Gambon's Uncle Vanya on the London stage, but otherwise, it's a unique creation.

What else is there to this new "edition" of "Brideshead"? A great deal, but only if you're among those who missed both Evelyn Waugh's novel and the wonderful Granada TV realization 27 long years ago - Irons! Gielgud! Olivier! - how can you compete with that? So, if it's a first-time visit, see the movie by all means; if you can recite lines from the book or the TV series, you can survive without the new version.

In 135 minutes, the film is handling well what the TV series did so completely in - yes - 13 HOURS. Obviously, except for the basic story line (script by Jeremy Brock, of "The Last King of Scotland"), this is a different kind of animal, still "leisurely" enough, but unable to luxuriate in the smallest details as the series did. The director is Julian Jarrold, and he is doing far better than in his recent "Becoming Jane," keeps the story moving in a smooth fashion.

As to the leading roles in the film, they are all well acted, but without great impact. Matthew Goode is Charles Ryder, the focal character; Ben Whishaw is the slightly over-flamboyant Sebastian Flyte (who needs understating more than exaggerating - Anthony Andrews' performance in the TV series was exactly right); Hayley Atwell is Sebastian's sister (and rival for Charles' affection).

One amazing thing about "Brideshead" is how this story from a different time, about characters from a different world, remains interesting and meaningful. It's almost as if Waugh's work was bulletproof - not that these filmmakers were less than respectful to the author. A better test would be a Eurotrash opera version, heaven forfend.

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15 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
The Romance of Youth, The Hardness of Older Age, 25 July 2008

Author: bdsto from Canada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I've just come from the Canadian premiere of Brideshead Revisited, a story that is a great mark along the journey of my life.

I was 21 when I saw the TV series on CBC in January/February, 1981. I was nine months away from beginning my own great adventure in the world, traveling through the British Isles and Europe for the first time. Young -- only two years older than Charles and Sebastian when we first meet them -- thirsting for experience, longing for love and romance -- the kinds of love and romance reserved for the hearts and minds of youth -- the story made an indelible impression on me. I identified with those two young men. My heart overflowed when theirs did and ached when theirs did.

And what an impression that series made in Britain and North America. It set fashions for the decade on both sides of the Atlantic. Both in clothing and hairstyles. Hair salons posted ads in newspapers and signs in their windows: "Get the Brideshead look". For men, 3-plaited trousers -- linen in summer and flannels in winter -- became de rigeur (sp?) for both men and women, it taught us to take the loosely-woven cotton sweaters that fashion suddenly offered us to tie them about our necks. It ushered in the want for society style and demonstrable excess that demarcated the 1980s. Very few stories, resurrected, make such an enormous mark on an era.

Tonight, I saw a well-crafted, truncated and changed -- but most acceptably changed -- film of the story, through 48-year-old eyes.Older and wiser, I still ached for Charles and Sebastian, but now from an understanding uncle's point-of-view, if you will. Like a hardened Charles, as he reflects back during the Second World War, I, too, am more world-weary and hardened. Older, I better understand the lessons of the story. But also, after seeing the film, I am left, like Charles in the War on discovering he's once again at Brideshead, reflecting wistfully on my youth. On what could have been and might have been had I made different choices and decisions. Not regretfully, but wistfully. It brought into my life a remembrance of and longing for those exquisite feelings of romance and love reserved for youth and without which my middle age has proceeded.

In 1981, I was the Charles of Oxford. Today, I am the Charles of the War. Even older.

Will this movie change the fashions, style and manner of today? No. The times are not right for it. Nevertheless, I highly recommend it. Then find the TV series on DVD and read the book, if you care to. Each is a 20th Century masterpiece.

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11 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Does not stand up to the miniseries, 6 August 2008

Author: CTS-1 from USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Naturally, comparisons to the classic 1981 miniseries are unavoidable. Because of the choice to use the same location (Castle Howard) for Brideshead in the film as the mini, they become even more obvious.

With just over two hours, a lot of the story gets chopped out, along with a lot of the minor characters. In fact, the film is basically about a fifteen year long love triangle: Sebastian, Charles, and Julia. All of the aspects of the Flytes as a dying class (replaced by the Rex Mottrams of the world) and the Catholic themes are practically written out.

Perhaps the single most pernicious edit was the fact that Charles' conversion to Catholicism was edited from the film. Without that conversion, the whole Catholic element becomes just an impediment to the Charles-Julia relationship. Possibly the worst effect coming from this choice is that the film kind of drifts to a close without any closure, when it returns Charles to Brideshead in 1944.

On the plus side, Emma Thompson is appropriately manipulative and domineering as Lady Marchmain. Also, the cinematography is top-notch. Curiously enough, however, there is far less star power in the film than in the miniseries. Granada TV was supposedly using the mini-series to flagship their "quality" programming right before a license renewal, and they got some names: John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier, Jeremy Irons. The new film has Emma Thompson.

Another problem with the short time involved is that the characters are not allowed to develop the same way they were in the 1981 mini. The character who suffers most from this is Sebastian. Anthony Andrews' Sebastian was a brat who got away with being a brat because he could turn on the charm and make anybody love him, at least in the beginning. Ben Whitshaw's Sebastian is still a brat, but he is not shown as the great charmer. The funny thing is, sometimes when they say the same lines, Andrews came off as witty, Whitshaw comes off as whiny.

Along those lines, Bridey is essentially a non-character. Simon "Arthur Dent" Jones' magnificently understated performance as an upper-class twit is sorely missed.

Also, in the miniseries, it is obvious that Charles falls first for Sebastian, and then for the entire Flyte family (except Bridey). In the film, one could get the impression that Charles is more in love with the building, than either Julia or Sebastian.

This isn't to say that Brideshead Revisited was a bad film; it was a good (but not great) film. However, not unlike film versions of Pride and Prejudice, there is too much Waugh for 135 minutes. In the case of this film, dropping both the class and Catholicism aspects in large part makes a good film, but not necessarily one fully in touch with Waugh's themes.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Last Year at Brideshead, 16 September 2008

Author: Filmjack3 from United States

Among many of the most prestigious literature selections, not to mention mini-series, Brideshead Revisited not only wasn't on my radar, I didn't even know if it would be the kind of well-regarded literature or mini-series I intended to watch. But as this newly revised picture, now a mere 136 minutes vs 10 hours, it looked interesting if only as a kind of "handsomely made" picture (you know the kind, along the lines of Atonement for recent comparison). I was also intrigued by the allure of a huge, sprawling mansion here called Brideshead, as it reminded me of Alain Resnais's film Last Year at Marienbad and how memories and recollections and lost love and hope is explored in the spaces of this dark, cold region of exquisite luxury. Some of that is explored in this film, and some of it... isn't.

It's for the most part a fairly tragic story of a young man, Charles (Matthew Goode, charming and suave but also subtle and down-beat, a really fine turn), who enrolls at Oxford and meets a meek/'fey' guy named Sebastian, and through him he's introduced (reluctantly in point of fact) to Sebastian's family, including his sister Julia, and his very cold and strident mother (Emma Thompson). Sebastian really wants Charles all for himself - it's a friendship that goes just a nose-hair's length into admitting homosexuality but never really goes that far despite all appearances to the contrary - but he becomes apart of the fold, and as well falling deeply in love with Julia against 'other' wishes (mostly the matriarch's over Charles's religion).

There's a lot of the fragility of the bourgeois on display here, the arrogance and detachment that's shown very closely by the director for maximum effect. Unlike a Resnais he's not about to get too experimental with the camera; he's a careful craftsman more often than not, allowing for just enough wonderment of the whole Brideshead atmosphere to really sink into how it could be a double-edged sword of perception. And as is bound to happen with material this sprawling (at one point time jumps back 10 years, then ahead 4 years, until we kind of know where we are), a lot seems to be cut out. While it altogether makes a coherent and entertaining enough picture, I wonder how much more of a benefit this would make as an epic, where we are absorbed more fully with the Oxford school or Charles and Sebastian or even the parents (who, thankfully, are played wonderfully here by cold-as-ice Thompson and fascinatingly guilt-ridden and subtle Michael Gambon), or how the wealth structure even works here.

Indeed, I found myself not so much involved with the Charles/Sebastian stuff, even as it's fairly well-acted and well-shot enough, as I was with the themes of religion raised in the picture. This caught me off guard and hinted at something deeper being expounded upon. Yet, again, we get just tastes of what's offered more than likely in the original text, tastes that are powerful like a 'last-rites' argument, and the tortured state of being raised from the cradle with an intense, overbearing Catholic conscience.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A gallant, flawed effort to condense Evelyn Waugh's layered acerbic commentary into 133 minutes, 19 August 2008

Author: Terrell-4 from San Antonio, Texas

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I suspect that doing justice to the movie Brideshead Revisited without having read Evelyn Waugh's book is just about as impossible as enjoying that first taste of grouse that has been hanging to ripen longer than we'd like to know. I haven't read the book and, while I have the television series on DVD, I've never gotten around to watching it. Still, I enjoy watching movies and reading critical opinions of great literature...it's so much less demanding than reading the originals.

For my money, the movie of Brideshead Revisited is a gallant and conscientious...not failure, exactly, but at least a strangely uninvolving, beautifully mounted melodrama set amongst the tiresomely wealthy and privileged English very upper class. The failure in the movie, in my opinion, was the failure to establish just how obsessed Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) became with the building that was Brideshead and then the life of beauty and casual, privileged style that it represented. Without that obsession, how else to explain a continuing, friendly, sexual relationship with Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), a scrawny, drunken, self- pitying twig from the Marchmain family tree, and a continuing, friendly, sexual relationship with the twig's cool sister, Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell), a woman whom many would consider, without the prospects of a fortune attached to her, not worth the effort. Whishaw and Atwell did fine work, but physically, for me, lacked the attractiveness and charisma that might have made them interesting even if they had been a banker's assistant and a tea room waitress.

That leaves us with Lady Marchmain, with Emma Thompson, and with Lady Marchmain's fearful brand of righteous piety. Thompson gives a performance that justifies the movie. Lady Marchmain is a woman totally secure in her position and in her Catholic faith. That she is ruining the lives of her children is not something she is aware of; she is saving their souls by saving their faith for them. Her certitude and gimlet faith would give respectability to an Inquisition judge or a sweating television evangelist. Yet in this movie the contest between Lady Marchmain's rigid faith and Charles Ryder's atheism is not much more than mildly interesting. There's just not enough time, in my opinion, to dwell on this essential fact of life in Brideshead Revisited. What time there is, however, helps make sense of the movie because of Emma Thompson's wonderful performance.

I left Brideshead Revisited still clutching my love of Britain exemplified by its history, by Masterpiece Theatre, by Inspector Morse and by those wonderfully made umbrellas that cost a small fortune to buy in London. My encounter with Charles Ryder who, in my view, is essentially an opportunist, left mixed feelings. My encounter with the Marchmain clan left me impatient and a little contemptuous. Waugh is supposed to have said that he doubted if six Americans could understand Brideshead Revisited. He just may be right.

I think the movie is worth seeing because it's such a serious effort. Trying to cram Waugh's point of view into little more than two hours was probably too ambitious. However, I left the theater determined to read the book.

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