ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies

EVELYN WAUGH’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited is considered a classic of British literature. The 1981 television adaptation is a landmark of the medium. It takes a brave soul to decide that the world might welcome a brand new film version of this celebrated text.

The 2008 adaptation looks a treat and features a number of finely judged performances, but it also lacks a clear sense of purpose and doesn’t have the emotional impact that one might have expected.

Matthew Goode stars as Charles Ryder, the bright, middle-class boy who is beguiled by an aristocratic family and their sumptuous ancestral home at Brideshead. At Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) is smitten with Charles and introduces him to this world of wealth and privilege.

Charles is happy to go along for the ride, and even wins the approval of Sebastian’s formidable mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), who considers him a good influence on her dissolute son. Sebastian falls in love with Charles but Charles is all too obviously attracted to Sebastian’s sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell).

Criss-crossing the events of two decades, Brideshead does convey a beautiful vision of a vanished world, but struggles to condense the themes of the novel into a coherent two hour film.

Lady Marchmain’s unshakeable Catholic faith is seen to destroy the lives of everyone near her and the film could be construed as an assault on religious fundamentalism. Charles’ atheism marks him as an outsider, but the film can also be read as his quest for some kind of spiritual epiphany.

That ambiguity makes this version of Brideshead Revisited curiously unsatisfying, although Goode and Whishaw are both commendable and the film is still a thoroughly respectable literary adaptation.

Nationwide release

Director: Julian Jarrold
Cast: Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Greta Sacchi
Screenwriters: Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 133 mins
Country: UK
Year: 2008

© Allan Hunter, 2008