Revisiting Brideshead . . .
Aug. 5th, 2008 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelseagirlI snuck off this afternoon (or, to be literal, at 11:45 am) to catch a matinee of Brideshead Revisited. I am, as I may have mentioned, vastly a fan of the book and the Jeremy Irons/Anthony Andrews miniseries, and had been looking forward to this with trepidation. Why revisit perfection?
Well, it is not and will never be definitive, but it was beautifully filmed and well-acted. There were things about it that bothered me; there were things about it that I do wonder what people who aren't familiar with the source text will make of it; and there were some changes that I did think undermined what Waugh was on about. Still, it caught the spirit of the book, and was well worth seeing. Many of the things that disturbed me most in the tv ads had a different spin onscreen. More below, with spoilers, under the cut.
And they used Castle Howard again. I hadn't read where it was filmed, but I was sitting there going "that looks like . . . like . . . ," and the closing credits came up, and it was. So I guess Castle Howard has become Really Truly Brideshead. (Or it's like having a member of the original cast play a cameo in your movie remake. One or the other.)
The cuts in length meant that a lot of things had to be so concentrated/sped up that you didn't get the full sense of the characters. Anthony Blanche's later, devastating comments at Charles's opening meant very little because we hadn't got to know Anthony; we just know he's bitchy. The Sebastian/Kurt relationship was skated by. Sebastian's disintegration, and Charles's relationship with Julia, happened so very quickly that they seemed almost instantaneous, whereas both of those things took more time in the happening. The major change, bringing Julia to Venice, and starting her flirtation with Charles while he was still at the most intense point of his relationship with Sebastian was, I thought, unfair to the story and to Sebastian (who felt it, keenly); the trip to Venice is the apogee of Charles/Sebastian's relationship with a very steep downhill slide afterwards, not the cause of that slide.
I'd only got to the first episode in my rewatch but there were shots that felt like they'd been practically duplicated from it, and sometimes the actors' expressions or movements suggested to me they'd watched, not to copy necessarily but to be inspired. (At one point Sebastian does something with his eyebrows that was so very like Anthony Andrews' Sebastian, despite their very different physical presences, that I blinked.)
I'd worried about Sebastian from the posters and adverts because he didn't look gorgeous enough, but onscreen he had a delicate sort of prettiness that worked very well. Anthony Andrews's Sebastian had a golden-boy quality whereas this Sebastian was more delicate and effete (I'd say AA's S was like a Lord Alfred Douglas who was destructive to himself instead of others, perhaps). In a way, I suppose what struck me was that here he was more clearly and overtly gay, and yet I was quite certain that Charles and Sebastian in the series were at it like rabbits, while the shy kiss this Sebastian gave to Charles while they were drinking wine in the summerhouse made me think, "My goodness, could it be possible that they . . . haven't?" (Which, ok, then Charles gets a little bit more of a bye for pursuing Julia earlier on, but it makes him exceptionally obtuse.)
This Charles I thought quite good; Julia reminded me awfully of Polly Walker in Enchanted April, which isn't a bad thing at all. The rest of the cast was fine; some of them just didn't have the chance to develop their roles. (Tiny thing: Boy Mulcaster was so much more hostile instead of just oafish; I wonder how many casual viewers would realize Charles's wife was his sister. Also, Charles DID go to Winchester, not "someplace you've never heard of," though I realize the latter gives him more Everyman cred.) Intertextually, when Clare Bloom's Lady Marchmain got too charming and monstrous, I could comfort myself with the notion that IRL the actress lived with the guy who wrote Portnoy's Complaint. Let's skip over my deep and abiding love for Anthony Blanche, shall we?
Oh, Aloysius, the teddy bear, shouldn't have been in Sebastian's room in North Africa because that was a part of his fascination with childhood and he'd let go of it by that time. Rex Mottram, though technically acceptable, was part of Julia's rebellion, not her mother's plan -- she knew he was vulgar and she rather liked that.
But the one thing I thought most unfair to Waugh's text, if more palatable to early 21st century audiences, was the treatment of religion. In Waugh, and in the miniseries, it was far more complex. Sebastian fell apart not only because of his mother (and since Charles didn't cheat on him with his sister -- their relationship started on the return from South America, as it technically does here too, so not a factor), but because he was God-haunted -- it wasn't just Lady Marchmain's doing, though her heavy hand was a big factor. There is even a suggestion that Sebastian may have a vocation he's running away from. Religion is used oppressively in the novel, and it leads to unhappiness for some characters, but it's not the bad guy. At the end of the movie, Charles is about to put out the chapel candle, and instead he walks away. I wasn't sure how to interpret it -- not putting out the candle means a greater understanding? Or just walking away, free of Sebastian and Julia and Brideshead-the-place at last? At the end of the book we know that he has come to some kind of faith himself, and despite the bleakness all around him and the bleakness of his own life, he's got that to hold onto. I know "death of the author" and all that, but Waugh mostly wrote dark satire, and here he (a Catholic, too) was touching on something that meant a great deal to him. FWIW.
Well, it is not and will never be definitive, but it was beautifully filmed and well-acted. There were things about it that bothered me; there were things about it that I do wonder what people who aren't familiar with the source text will make of it; and there were some changes that I did think undermined what Waugh was on about. Still, it caught the spirit of the book, and was well worth seeing. Many of the things that disturbed me most in the tv ads had a different spin onscreen. More below, with spoilers, under the cut.
And they used Castle Howard again. I hadn't read where it was filmed, but I was sitting there going "that looks like . . . like . . . ," and the closing credits came up, and it was. So I guess Castle Howard has become Really Truly Brideshead. (Or it's like having a member of the original cast play a cameo in your movie remake. One or the other.)
The cuts in length meant that a lot of things had to be so concentrated/sped up that you didn't get the full sense of the characters. Anthony Blanche's later, devastating comments at Charles's opening meant very little because we hadn't got to know Anthony; we just know he's bitchy. The Sebastian/Kurt relationship was skated by. Sebastian's disintegration, and Charles's relationship with Julia, happened so very quickly that they seemed almost instantaneous, whereas both of those things took more time in the happening. The major change, bringing Julia to Venice, and starting her flirtation with Charles while he was still at the most intense point of his relationship with Sebastian was, I thought, unfair to the story and to Sebastian (who felt it, keenly); the trip to Venice is the apogee of Charles/Sebastian's relationship with a very steep downhill slide afterwards, not the cause of that slide.
I'd only got to the first episode in my rewatch but there were shots that felt like they'd been practically duplicated from it, and sometimes the actors' expressions or movements suggested to me they'd watched, not to copy necessarily but to be inspired. (At one point Sebastian does something with his eyebrows that was so very like Anthony Andrews' Sebastian, despite their very different physical presences, that I blinked.)
I'd worried about Sebastian from the posters and adverts because he didn't look gorgeous enough, but onscreen he had a delicate sort of prettiness that worked very well. Anthony Andrews's Sebastian had a golden-boy quality whereas this Sebastian was more delicate and effete (I'd say AA's S was like a Lord Alfred Douglas who was destructive to himself instead of others, perhaps). In a way, I suppose what struck me was that here he was more clearly and overtly gay, and yet I was quite certain that Charles and Sebastian in the series were at it like rabbits, while the shy kiss this Sebastian gave to Charles while they were drinking wine in the summerhouse made me think, "My goodness, could it be possible that they . . . haven't?" (Which, ok, then Charles gets a little bit more of a bye for pursuing Julia earlier on, but it makes him exceptionally obtuse.)
This Charles I thought quite good; Julia reminded me awfully of Polly Walker in Enchanted April, which isn't a bad thing at all. The rest of the cast was fine; some of them just didn't have the chance to develop their roles. (Tiny thing: Boy Mulcaster was so much more hostile instead of just oafish; I wonder how many casual viewers would realize Charles's wife was his sister. Also, Charles DID go to Winchester, not "someplace you've never heard of," though I realize the latter gives him more Everyman cred.) Intertextually, when Clare Bloom's Lady Marchmain got too charming and monstrous, I could comfort myself with the notion that IRL the actress lived with the guy who wrote Portnoy's Complaint. Let's skip over my deep and abiding love for Anthony Blanche, shall we?
Oh, Aloysius, the teddy bear, shouldn't have been in Sebastian's room in North Africa because that was a part of his fascination with childhood and he'd let go of it by that time. Rex Mottram, though technically acceptable, was part of Julia's rebellion, not her mother's plan -- she knew he was vulgar and she rather liked that.
But the one thing I thought most unfair to Waugh's text, if more palatable to early 21st century audiences, was the treatment of religion. In Waugh, and in the miniseries, it was far more complex. Sebastian fell apart not only because of his mother (and since Charles didn't cheat on him with his sister -- their relationship started on the return from South America, as it technically does here too, so not a factor), but because he was God-haunted -- it wasn't just Lady Marchmain's doing, though her heavy hand was a big factor. There is even a suggestion that Sebastian may have a vocation he's running away from. Religion is used oppressively in the novel, and it leads to unhappiness for some characters, but it's not the bad guy. At the end of the movie, Charles is about to put out the chapel candle, and instead he walks away. I wasn't sure how to interpret it -- not putting out the candle means a greater understanding? Or just walking away, free of Sebastian and Julia and Brideshead-the-place at last? At the end of the book we know that he has come to some kind of faith himself, and despite the bleakness all around him and the bleakness of his own life, he's got that to hold onto. I know "death of the author" and all that, but Waugh mostly wrote dark satire, and here he (a Catholic, too) was touching on something that meant a great deal to him. FWIW.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:01 pm (UTC)I never read the book until a couple of years ago, and it completely stoppd me in my tracks. It's now in my Top 5, and I'm deeply worried about this adaptation.
Maybe it's because I'm a Catholic meself (or at least raised that way), but what struck me about the book when I did finally read it (and Thank God-so to speak- as an adult) was that it was first and foremost about Catholiscism and faith. I've never really believed that Sebastian was necessarily gay, but rather that he was running away from the vocation you mentioned, in any way he could. Sebastian remains something of a child throughout the novel, and I think that's the eseence of his purity of character. I've always thought that Sebastian was a natural saint- against his will, as opposed to any of his siblings, who were hamstrung by their faith and failings in other ways.
And anyway, I thought the whole point of the novel was Charles's final conversion to Catholiscism, and actual acceptance of faith itself.
That said, I've always thought Mathew Goode was rather yummy, so I'll probably see the movie anyway...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:52 pm (UTC)I thought the handling of religion was probably the movie's greatest single failing -- there is the pretty factor, but think about whether that's going to annoy you too much. When I first watched the miniseries with my housemates, back in college, I was the only one of the three of us who was at all religious and I was the only one who liked the ending. I think this might've been the other way around.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 11:50 pm (UTC)It's all that Kate Mosse...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-06 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 11:55 pm (UTC)Just re-read your last paragraph. I gotta say yup, Yup, and YUP.
Scared of this movie now...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-06 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-06 03:45 pm (UTC)Clare Bloom's Lady Marchmain is also much less monstrous, imo, than Emma Thompson's -- you felt that she really loved her children even if she was contributing to the destruction of some of them, and I understood much better Sebastian's fear that she would win Charles over to her side, because you did feel that she cared.