Film review: "Brideshead" offers a spectacle in impeccable taste
I'd say "Brideshead Revisited" looks like a million bucks, but in a world in which a million bucks isn't even enough to launch a Larry the Cable Guy feature, that's hardly a compliment. So let's say it looks like a hundred million bucks. The budget reportedly was closer to $20 million, but when your title location is represented by Castle Howard, an astonishing late 17th century manor house in North Yorkshire, England, and your camera crew also visits Venice and Morocco, you're almost certain to produce one of the most expensive-looking films of the year (so long as your muse hasn't convinced you the time is right for the first Evelyn Waugh "mumblecore" movie).
Ben Whishaw (left) and Matthew Goode star in Miramax Films' "Brideshead Revisited." Nicola Dove Miramax Films
Rated PG-13 for some sexual content
Length: 120 minutes
Released: July 25, 2008 LimitedScore: 3.0
Cast: Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Greta Scacchi
Director: Julian JarroldProducer: Kevin Loader
Writer: Jeremy Brock, Andrew Davies
Genre: Drama
Distributor: Miramax Films
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Just as Harrison Ford this year returned to the Indiana Jones role he originated in 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," so Castle Howard is revisiting its portrayal of the Brideshead estate, which it debuted in the much-loved 11-part British television series of 1981. It's no insult to Ford to say the stately home looks less timeworn; no doubt the former Han Solo requires a reliable support staff, but the Howard house is maintained by as many as 250 preservationists and landscapers during tourist season.
As this introduction may have indicated, I don't have strong feelings about director Julian Jarrold's new version of "Brideshead Revisited." I haven't seen the TV series nor have I read Waugh's 1945 novel, so I can't join those who are outraged at the compromises required to condense the contents of the book -- generally regarded as a masterpiece of English literature -- and the 659-minute serial into a 135-minute feature film. In any case, I've found that high-toned literary adaptations of the Merchant-Ivory type are more enjoyable when embraced as genre films rather than confronted as the major works of art they aspire to be. In other words, fans of period English decor, polite if sometimes villainous behavior and the precise diction of classically trained actors will find much to admire here, just as the fan of a vampire movie, for example, would be cheered by the sight of a velvet-lined coffin and a pair of bared canines.
The first half of the film is gripping and entertaining, as middle-class would-be painter Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode -- Emily Mortimer's brother in Woody Allen's "Match Point"), a new student at elitist Oxford University, is befriended by Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), a fey and eccentric aristocrat whose bosom companions are "sodomites" and a Teddy bear named Aloysius. (In the role, Whishaw resembles DJ Qualls, as dressed by Truman Capote.)
Sebastian -- clearly in love with his new friend -- takes the awed Charles to his family estate, Brideshead, where the story's themes of class envy and guilt (Catholic and otherwise) come to the fore. Brideshead is ruled by Sebastian's disapproving mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), presented here as the very embodiment of pleasure-denying sanctimony. "God was always her first love," says the lady's estranged husband (Michael Gambon), now living in Italy with a more liberal Catholic mistress. (Viewers of the film, which takes a dim view of religious fundamentalism, may be surprised to learn Waugh had converted to Catholicism before he wrote his book.)
Also at Brideshead is Sebastian's young sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell), who offers Charles a less problematic potential sexual entree into the privileged world of Brideshead.
Scripted by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, "Brideshead Revisted" remains complex, whatever material was lost in the journey from page to screen. The fears and desires of the characters are ambiguous; even Lady Marchmain is sympathetic in her way, motivated by what appears to be true belief in the doom of the non-Catholic soul. Jarrold's staging is surprisingly sure and steady, considering the somewhat campy attitude of the director's previous films, "Becoming Jane" and "Kinky Boots." If nothing else, he and his crew keep our eyes interested with a succession of rare items: steam locomotives, cloche hats, vintage automobiles; a frock decorated with the stylized silhouettes of golden swallows; a tortoise with a jewel-encrusted shell.
Unfortunately, when the increasingly anguished and dipsomaniacal Sebastian exits the story, he takes much of our interest with him. Goode is a fine actor; he's "plausible" and "reliable," as Lady Marchmain says of Charles; but reliability is not as entertaining as unpredictability and dissolution.
"Brideshead Revisited" is playing exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.
-- John Beifuss, 529-2394
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