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Brideshead Revisited
I can't cut myself off from his grace
2008
Review: August 15, 2008
Director: Julian Jerrold
Starring: Matthew Goode, Ben Whitshaw, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson
Not really
THE SETUP:
Adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel about a man who gets wound up with an aristocratic English family.
DISCUSSION:
Okay, so I have not read the novel that this is based on, nor have I seen the famous 12-hour miniseries from BBC, so I am coming into this completely fresh. We open with our main character, Charles Ryder, at a grand British estate during World War II. He says that he has no emotions of his own left—only guilt. We then flash back to two years prior, on a cruise ship, where Charles is having an opening of his paintings of a time when he was in the jungle. He sees a woman he knows and pursues her, until she suddenly turns and recognizes him. We then flash back to ten years before that. All this flashing back, I understand, is why the thing is called Brideshead Revisited, by the way.
So Charles leaves his father, who is always archly superior and ironic every time we see him, to start school at Oxford. We are supposed to understand that he is from a significantly lower class than many of his classmates. He is warned to stay away from the sodomites, one of which is identified as he is rowed down a canal while clutching a teddy bear. A little vomiting through a window and soon he is invited to breakfast with the very sodomite that was identified earlier, Sebastian Flyte. He has a bunch of friends over who all do that kind of loud, erudite pretending at being hyper-intellectual free spirits that you often see in movies of this type. Sebastian and Charles are soon close companions.
One day Sebastian drives Charles back to Brideshead to meet his nanny, but wants to high-tail it out of there when he hears that his mother is coming. "I'm not having you mixed up with my family," he says. "You're MY friend." But he sees his sister, Julia, is present with his mother, and turns around. Charles is introduced and asked to stay for dinner. He becomes more involved with the family, and when sent back to his father, is immediately summoned back to Brideshead, and spends the entire summer there.
The novel and BBC miniseries are known to have some homoerotic content, but here they just hang around shirtless, sample numerous wines and lay around drunk, and gaze into one another's eyes. We might focus on the "Well, did they do it or not?" aspects, but at that time in history there were what are later described as "these romantic English friendships," which are clearly very close and emotionally intimate, and surely often resulted in gay sex, but the point is that in this context, that aspect is not as relevant as the overall homosocial nature of their friendship. The point is that Sebastian, who does appear to be fully homosexual, is totally smitten with Charles, who is becoming more enchanted by his sister Julia. Sebastian is also becoming quite the drinker. The two kids go to see their father in Venice, and invite Charles to come with them. Don't you wish you were around in the days and in the circles where your rich friends would just invite you to spend months with them on a free European vacation? And all you have to do is smile politely and deal with their bizarre neuroses and warped family relations.
So we haven't even talked about Sebastian and Julia's mother, Lady Marchmain. Don't you love these expressive British novel names, that hint at the nature of their characters? Anyway, she's a recent convert to Catholicism and is, shall we say, a little rigid. She drives both her children insane with her moral uprightness and adherence to morality, and this is also what drove her husband, who is not religious, away. Charles, by the way, is an atheist. This is all not irrelevant stuff—in fact, it turns out to be what the movie is ABOUT. Anyway, in Venice, Charles kisses Julia, is seen by Sebastian, and this ruins everyone's time. Sebastian feels betrayed, as he thought Charles loved him, and upon return Lady Marchmain is NOT pleased. She kicks Charles out, first informing him that he can never marry Julia, as a Catholic can never marry an atheist. She is promptly married off to this brash Canadian, Rex.
SPOILERS > > > Four years later! Charles has been completely dropped by the Flytes. Lady Marchmain stops by one day and asks him to go to Morocco, where Sebastian has left to flee the family and has become a total addict. Charles goes, but no way is Sebastian coming back. Then we flash-forward, back to the cruise ship, where Julia and Charles have wild, passionate sex, and plan to get married. Charles himself is married by this point, by the way, but we never see or hear a word about his wife again.
But their happiness is not to last. Literally AS they are leaving to be married, the father returns from Venice to die at Brideshead. Lady Marchmain is now dead. Both Julia and Dad seem to be rushing to embrace Catholicism, which frustrates Charles. Julia says she can't marry him, saying she can't "cut herself off from His grace." They keep bringing a priest to deliver last rites to Dad, and Charles keeps saying "He wouldn't want that," but everyone thinks he's just being an asshole. On his deathbed, Dad genuflects, indicating his embrace of the religion, and considerately dies seconds after receiving last rites. Now—back to present day! Charles is with the military, occupying the great house. He goes into the chapel, where he sees a candle. He is about to snuff it out, when he decides not to. The last sight we see is him walking into an overexposed archway, and the screen bursts to white—the end.
< < < SPOILERS END
This is why I was saying that the movie is primarily about Charles' religious situation. Throughout he is steadfastly atheist and sees how Lady Marchmain's rigid Catholicism drives her children away and alienates them, even though what she's trying to do is protect their futures and their souls. I was thinking "Wow, I've rarely seen such a wholesale embrace of atheism," but at the very end it veers strongly back. Charles becomes more divorced from everyone because of his rigidity and inability to allow God's grace in—he senses that HE is the one missing out, "cutting himself off from God's grace." The final gesture indicates that he is ready to allow the possibility of religious grace into his life, and the last technical thing—the burst to white—almost always signifies a burst of religious insight. Charles is not converted, but has opened himself to the possibility.
Yeah great, religion and all, but how's the movie? It definitely shows some serious narrative compression—maybe we don't need 12 hours, but it certainly seems as though a lot has been pressed in here. Hence we have marriages that take place after one casual meeting, and spouses that vanish and are never seen or heard of again. Serious life events happen, then another happens, then another, then we flash back two years for a minute before flashing back ten. This just keeps you, as a viewer, a little at a distance from the whole thing, and also keeps certain of the characters at a distance. For example, we are told [repeatedly] that Sebastian and Julia resent their mother for being rigid and instilling guilt, but as far as we can see, the woman herself is perhaps a bit dry, but ultimately quite delightful. Even the main characters are quite pale—I never felt I understood the nature of Julia's feeling for Charles, or for anything, really. Charles himself seems to not get attached to much of anything or anyone—but is this his character, or is it that he just doesn't come through in the movie? Basically we need more time, especially in the middle section. As it is, it seems like we have the first hour of a normal movie, then a highlight reel from the following three hours of the movie. Just enough so that the whole thing makes a little bit of sense.
Everyone's acting is fine, everything looks fine, the only thing is that this TYPE of thing, this TYPE of Miramax movie may have you feeling like you had somehow taken a trip back to the 90s. Ultimately, if you've read the book and want to see the whole theological angle brought out, you might enjoy this. If not, I'm harder-pressed to find a reason to see it. It goes along fine, but leaves one a bit cold, distant from its characters and less and less involved as the narrative starts picking up speed and plowing through plot. Really, the ideal audience are those who like these kind of British historical things and don't really care what the content is.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
I can't really say there's any compelling reason to do so.
