The palatial estate sits languid against the landscape, the massive family home base looking
as much like a museum as a manor. Within its walls are secrets kept silent for far
too many years, a lineage bad in lies, deception, and an imperturbable faith in
God. For the Flytes, Brideshead reflects their own insular being -- self contained,
nail with its own ornate chapel and religious iconography. But for anyone away
the clan, such opulence shields wealth of a different, worrying kind. And should
one and only revisit the famed locale, they overly will encounter themselves lost in its amoral allure.
When we first gear meet heart class student Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), he is leaving
his distant father for Oxford. Instantly, he is thrust into a world of privilege,
and the peaked sphere of influence circumferent fey fop Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw).
Over the course of the school year, they become inseparable in ways that suggest something
other than bare companionship. Fate finds the pair spending the summertime at Sebastian's
family home base, known as Brideshead. There, Charles meets two women who will figure promin
ently in his future -- the staunchly Catholic matriarch Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson)
and Sebastian's glamorous sister Julia (Hayley Atwell). Over the next few years,
everything about Brideshead, from the people to the place itself, will haunt Charl
es' attempt to forge an identity for himself, as well as guide what he genuinely wants
out of life.
Handsomely helmed by Kinky Boots/Becoming Jane director Julian Jarrold and like an expert condensing
Evelyn Waugh's classical novel, Brideshead Revisited is Merchant/Ivory with a fastidious political
standpoint. Leaning left field on everything from homosexualism to the interfering influence
of religion, while tranquil distilling British class fellowship into its horrid haves and
every bit spineless have-nots, this is a period piece as partial propaganda. Waugh made
no bones about his attempted social commentary, and Brideshead remains one of his
harshest denouncements. Jarrold merely ups the criticism, making it clear what side
of the scandals his and his film's philosophies lay.
At its core group, this big screen version (a 1000000 miles away in paper and patch points
from its famous 11-hour mini series first cousin circa 1981) focuses on blind faith -- in
love, in God, in money and its power, in manhood and all its frailties. Jarrold,
along with screenwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, never lets us forget that,
inside the imposing mansion with its statuary and classic canvases, rests an equally
antediluvian (and decomposition) notion of interpersonal relationships. No matter the parameters --
Charles and Sebastian, the Flyte children and their domineering mother/ultra-lenient
father, Lady Marchmain and the rest of the domain -- award and inordinate conviction
replace love and lust as proper emotional responses.
The throw off clearly shines within these confines, standouts being Whishaw as the particularly
offended Sebastian, so weak of will and physicality that you're convinced a rigid breeze
would break him in half. It's a knockout turn by the actor, particularly when slott
ed against Old Vic wonders like Thompson (marvellously bitchy as Mother Marchmain)
and Michael Gambon (as the discredited Lord paterfamilias in expatriate). Guiding us through
all of this is Goode, his open faced Everyman slowly giving way to a selfishness
all his own. The amazing thing about Brideshead Revisited, outside of its stunning
set design and meticulous direction, is how gullible we find ourselves inside these
posh and polite environs. Once the characters' true motives get showing through,
we are shocked at how dramatic (and unexpected) they are.
It's all part of this film's unfathomable charms. Most audiences would see an English
countryside accented with a castle-like keep and stiff swells and assume they know
the taradiddle from rote. Granted, Brideshead Revisited does initially feel like a journey we've
made before. But thanks to the utter gift of everyone in front of and behind the
lens, we wind up seeing the circumstances through fresh, and very satisfied eyes.
That must be why they call it Brideshead.
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