"Brideshead Revisited"

In 1982 PBS presented an eleven hour serialization of Evelyn Waugh’s novel, “Brideshead Revisted.” The new film version with Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon is 133 minutes long. The condensation means they left out most of the “bright young things in love” sections which characterized the social and party life of young upper crust people in England of the twenties, and instead focused entirely on sex and religion in the Marchmain family, the aristocrats of the Brideshead Estate, dealing with them in anecdotal fashion and with a heavy dose of psychology. There is little sense of a ‘Lost Generation’ of English youth between the two World Wars, the life span of the narrative, and scant awareness of the minority status of Catholicism in Britain, or, for that matter, no reference to the dwindling power of the UK. The story seems to take place within a historical bubble, with few tentacles reaching out to a wider world.
The PBS version made a star out of Jeremy Irons who played Charles Ryder. I doubt it’ll do the same for Matthew Goode who plays the painter and friend of the Marchmain family. Other than Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon, who are Lady and Lord Marchmain, and terrific in their parts, the rest of the cast is weak and minus charisma as performers. The original director was supposed to be David Yates and his players were to be Jude Law as Charles, Paul Betttany as Sebastian and Jennifer Connelly as Julia. Yates dropped out to direct one of the “Harry Potter” films and the plans fell through. The crucial encounters between Lady Marchmain and Charles, the nonbeliever amid strict Catholics, besides being intellectual thin, don’t work too well because Thompson’s chops as an actress simply overwhelm Mr. Goode. Ben Whishaw plays Sebastian and Haley Atwell, who was also in “The Duchess,” plays Julia. Julian Jarrold, the new Director, has certainly shot a better looking film, more cinematically satisfying, but he did not get the verve or brio the characters needed, although Atwell was passable. The script is too pedestrian and not clever enough in its intellectual arguments about religion. The setting was great. David Yates wanted to use Chatsworth as the estate, the same one used in “The Duchess,” but instead they used Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. It was more impressive, if that’s possible.
Religion is basically Lady Marchmain’s hammer to nail her children down as she saw fit. Very early on she drove her husband out of the house—he couldn’t stand what she was doing to their children--to live with his mistress, Cara, (Greta Scacchi) in Venice, Italy. The young people go to Venice, which is when Charles, who has been enamored of Julia from the first moment he saw her, makes his first pass at her, an encounter seen by Sebastian who had homosexual designs on Charles all along. That breaks that spell. Lady Marchmain had at first befriended Charles, seeing him as a good influence on her wayward son, who starts drinking heavily after Venice. But then she comes down hard on Charles and banishes him from Brideshead because Julia must marry a Catholic. Her attitude made me think of Paul Morel’s mother in SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence who similarly could not let her children go. Lady Marchmain kept them as pets on a short leash, squeezing the life out of them. But she tells Charles, “I have only wanted to make them safe in the world.” Sebastian, a serious alcoholic, goes off to Morocco where he spends the rest of his life in a monastery. Charles and Julia marry other people, but when they see each other again, which is several years later, they make love and decided they love each other and will divorce their spouses. The mother has already died by then and father shows up with his entourage of servants and caregivers to die in the house he grew up in. It’s a heart problem. This pushes Julia to a crisis. Her older brother Bridey (Ed Stoppard) calls in a priest which angers Charles who knows that Marchmain doesn’t want a priest. The question is would he hold out or give in to family pressures, or his own buried faith rising to the surface as the darkness closes in. What force will prove the strongest?
I was raised a strict catholic so the story really resonated for me. I experienced the complete brainwashing but finally broke away when I went to college, although influences lasted for years. But I know that all that early stuff is still buried in me, bubbling like magnum in some dark pocket in my being, and I often ask myself will it assert itself anew? Will I call out for a priest or die firm in my decades-old stand as an agnostic? To see what happens to Lord Marchmain, Julia and Charles you will have to see the movie. It has its weaknesses but it is also provocative on a very basic level.
The film was released last July but is now available on DVD.