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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 10/05/2008 : 17:17:15
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Brideshead Revisited
Early on in Julian Jarrold's faultlessly photographed version of Evelyn Waugh's novel, the newly arrived Charles Ryder is championed over drinks in his sumptuous Oxford rooms by Sebastian, the esthete who is to dominate his life for the next few decades. On hearing Ryder's a painter, one of the poseurs around the table challenges him to explain what art is good for. Simply and without pretension he does, prompting Sebastian to make them all toast Art and Love.
As signifying themes these are the ones. Religion it is true helps shape this often tortuous tale of repression, self-deceit and the search for oneself and acceptance of what one discovers along the way. And not just religion as platitude but as passion, as refuge from life's pain, and as giving oneself a break in the light of human fallibility.
But Art and Love are what it's all about.
Jarrold - as any film-maker would - is forced to take many cine-short-cuts to tell the tale, even in its two-and-a-quarter run-time. Neither Waugh's novel, nor the BBC's classic eight hour adaptation, had to sacrifice philosophic meat for plot-line gravy as this does.
And so the whole feels like well-made soap opera, complete with some very cheesy swells of music - epecially at moments of high romance or high art or high church. OK, OK we get it -- we're supposed to be impressed. As impressed as Charles is at his first glimpse of Brideshead, Sebastian's family pile and far, far grander than any of Oxford's dreaming spires which such a short time ago captivated, even intimidated Charles.
Embodying the religious element is Emma Thompson, whose meticulous performance is arguably the best thing in the film. She's not given enough screen time, but makes the most of every moment.
Simultaneously she conveys how her Catholicism and not her obscene wealth, carries her through the pain of an adulterous husband [the excellent Michael Gambon] and his long-term childless Italian mistress, her own four flawed children, and above-all, the loneliness that society forces upon a family which doesn't conform. Her palatial home comes complete with its own magnificent chapel, rivaling many of those we see in the Venice scenes.
Consider, too, the names: Ryder. Flyte. How will Charles hang on to the reins of his life journey surrounded by strangers. How will Sebastian resolve his escape from those whom he cannot trust as friends.
Conformity is the touchstone by which the English gentry measure accomplishment. Whether artist or banker, if the social patina is right all doors are opened. One can dance in the drawing room no matter how many rats are gnawing the kitchen cheese.
So Waugh - a Catholic convert himself - assured a cast of disemblers, all outsiders in their own way.
For Charles it's a matter of money. Though driven by a genuine passion for Art, he finds it very difficult to separate the decadance that great wealth buys from the opulent surroundings that house it. He's entirely flattered by the intensity of Sebastian's attentions, never really reciprocating the sexual frissons, though not above a bit of prick teasing. Besides, he's far more challenged by Sebastian's nubile sister Julia [Hayley Atwell, recently seen as Bess, Keira Knightley's rival in The Duchess].
Neither he nor we are sure whether he's motivated by lust, love, or a way into Brideshead, seat of tempatation of this golden family. There's a reason the book/film is named for a building and not one of its characters.
For Sebastian, it's his homosexuality - illegal at the time of the writing and its socio-political era. Without any hint of prurience, both Jarrold and actor Ben Whishaw [the androgynous Grenouille in Perfume] allow both Sebastian's defiance and his continual pain to drive what seems a pre-determined doom.
I may be reading it in, but it seemed as though Charles recognized the inevitable danger his friend flirts with, and the fear of it is the most potent reason he holds Sebastian at arm's length rather than thoroughly embrace the sexuality of their relationship. Sebastian, to the dignified regret of his mother, rejects religion in favor of the god alcohol. But his dissolution cannot be dissolved, and his demise is smelly, painful, and played out in a faraway land.
Julia is closest to the norm and dares the most in rejecting the way others have ordered her life. In that, she shows great bravery. But in the end she succumbs to the very boundaries she's rebelled against, even though it means losing what she claims she loves the most.
I think the most disappointing aspect of the film is that as it progresses you just don't care. The love story is too blocked and in ways that form a barrier between us and them up there on screen, dancing and cavorting and whining and dressed-to-the-nines. It's not just that the story's values have been so far superceded by our own contemporary ones - surely, there are enough parallels.
But nothing feels so important as to matter to us, let alone them. So when the grand climactic moment comes, it serves neither Art nor Love, but some short-changed message of faith that slips away with the patriarch like mercury. We just don't have enough to hold on to.
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Brideshead Revisited
