By Dan Callahan
Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited is still an accepted classic, and so is the famous TV miniseries from the early '80s, with its heavyweight star cast (the father figures were played by no less than Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud). It actually takes longer to watch the whole miniseries than to read the book, and PBS viewers were as overcome as Jeremy Irons's besotted, middle-class Charles Ryder at the sight of all the decadent glamour of the sprawling Brideshead mansion and the ambiguous Catholic deathtrap which lay waiting within it. In the miniseries, Anthony Andrews made the teddy bear-hugging rich boy Sebastian into a woefully lovable and then tragic figure, drowning his sorrows in drink. Sebastian is gay, and Charles is pretty willing to bend, but Waugh is too fastidious to bring this up in any direct manner; consequently, many fans of Brideshead Revisited aren't quite sure if Charles and Sebastian are ever lovers, and the miniseries is no help in this regard. Irons looks at Andrews with highly convincing love in his eyes, and even speaks of how he loves Sebastian during his endless, soothing voiceovers, which always seem to begin, "Ahhhh….those languid days at Brideshead….with Sebastian…which can never be again." It's the first few hours of college-boy love between Charles and Sebastian that give the miniseries of Brideshead its powerful romantic charge; in comparison, the last few hours where Charles tries to love Sebastian's sister Julia are cryptic, dreary and depressingly unconvincing.
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To read the rest of the review at Slant Magazine, click here.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
... Old is New Again: Brideshead Revisited
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6 comments:
Ah, but Julia is such an interesting character; it would be horrible to lose her. Her lines—about her husband Rex, "He doesn't see the point of me. [badly paraphrasing] But every now and then someone he respects takes and interest in me and he has to starts to wonder what he's missing." Of her guilt, again badly paraphrasing: "Julia can't go out today. She has to take care of her little sin." So much depth and conflict.
One of the joys of the novel (and the miniseries) is that it allows Charles (and readers) to make discoveries about people he had written off on his first impression. Julia, Cordelia, and several of the more minor characters all resurface at moments in Charles's life when he is able to see them differently. This character growth has such a truth to it that to say it should disappear in favor of advancing some romantic fantasy of how it all could have turned out is about as childish and clumsy as Sebastian yacking through the open window of Charles's ground-floor dorm room.
Ben Wishaw is dreamy. That is all.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Julia, as well as Cordelia and the minor characters who re-appear. To me, they don't seem to change all that much, or at least in ways that are interesting.
The filmmakers of this new version have said that Julia is seen as somehow "second best" after Sebastian, and they've tried to fix that, but to no avail.
I think you're (unconsciously?) echoing Lord Marchmain's mistress Cara when you speak of the relationship of Sebastian and Charles as immature. Cara's "little talk" with Charles is really a continental version of Lady Marchmain's "little talks" with Sebastian...it's just as destructive.
That's the one change in this new version that works: Greta Scacchi's Cara speaks in this new film's terms...she seems to have some respect for Sebastian's feelings, and warns Charles about hurting him.
Then again, you can't really "fix" everything that's wrong with "Brideshead"---new problems are created at every turn.
In closing, seeing the photo of Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews next to the one of these new, slim brunettes is very telling: Irons and Andrews are obviously the real Charles and Sebastian...these two are just imposters trying their best.
Agreed about Irons and Andrews--they ARE Charles and Sebastian. And I have no interest in the new movie; it sounds terrible. But we'll have to disagree on the meaning of "interesting," I guess. I'm not advocating Julia and Charles's romance--what a doomed train wreck! Nor would I stand by Cara's fake worldly wise advice. She's important to the story mostly because she's the only person who names C and S's relationship in terms that have any bearing on reality. But in naming, destroying, perhaps. (Plus, as you point out, she gets it wrong.) Anyway, it's Charles who in his immaturity sees himself as different from his, in his words, "pansy friends."
In the best of all possible worlds, Charles and Sebastian might have lived happily ever after. That would make a happy life for them and truly boring novel. So if by "fixing what's wrong with Brideshead" you mean fixing what went wrong with the lives of these characters--no thanks! :)
You're right, I think Cara does destroy what Charles and Sebastian have by naming it. The problem is that Waugh is clearly endorsing what she says. You can "fix" that, as the new film does, but then you have to keep "fixing" until you've destroyed the story. Which they do. It's not their fault, really...they seems to be trying their best, but it's an impossible job.
I don't think there can really be a "happily ever after" for Charles and Sebastian as written. But they're so beautifully drawn and characterized that I can't help wishing they weren't so trapped by the narrative...especially Sebastian, who is punished so unreasonably by Waugh in his melodramatic Moroccan exile.
The conflict will always be there, but I think it might have been resolved in a way that would be not so much more positive as more convincing. Sebastian deserves better, as a character, than to be permanently marooned with silly, sick Kurt in Morocco.
This new film isn't bad, by any means; it's worth seeing. But it goes wrong at many points, and the actors just aren't good enough to even begin to eclipse Olivier, Gielgud, Bloom and all the rest.
I'm always surprised when readers don't know if Charles and Sebastian were lovers. This line alone seems clear to me: "our naughtiness was high on the list of grave sins."
And Cara speaking about this friendship "typical to the English and the Germans" which is okay if it does not go on too long.
As for Lady Marchmain's seductive powers, remember that Lord Marchmain converted to her religion FOR her. Of course you can only really hate someone whom you have loved with such abandon.
Once I read that the new movie put Julia in Venice, I knew it wasn't for me.
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