Brideshead Revisited - Preview & US reaction
Preview by Jack Foley
BRIDESHEAD Revisited became one of the most popular TV shows in British small screen history when it first aired in 1981, making household names of its stars Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.
In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute (BFI) in 2000, for instance, the adaptation was placed tenth.
Based on the novels by Evelyn Waugh, it told an evocative tale of forbidden love and the loss of innocence set in the pre-World War II era.
Given the trend for adapting movies from popular TV shows (the current crop includes X-Files: Fight The Future and Get Smart), it was only a matter of time before someone turned to Brideshead.
And the task has fallen to Julian Jarrold, the British filmmaker behind past hits Kinky Boots and Becoming Jane, who has cast Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode in the pivotal roles made famous by Irons and Andrews.
English stalwarts Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon round out the cast in a period drama that has already been released in America to widespread acclaim (although quite why such a popular British series should have been released in the States first is a bit of a mystery).
In Jarrold’s film, Charles Ryder (Goode, of The Lookout fame) becomes entranced with the noble Marchmain family, first through the charming and provocative Sebastian Flyte (Whishaw, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), and then his sophisticated sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell).
The rise and fall of Charles’ infatuations reflect the decline of a decadent era in England between the wars. Thompson co-stars as Lady Marchmain.
Brideshead has been adapted for the screen by multiple BAFTA Award-winner Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones Diary, Bleak House) and Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland).
And critics in America have been largely impressed. Variety, for instance, wrote: “Allowing auds sufficient retro-aristo-lifestyle sumptuousness for their dollar, yet exhibiting admirable, intelligent directorial restraint, this Brideshead is mainstream arthouse fare par excellence.”
While The New York Observer stated: “The film version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited transforms one of the quintessential novels of the 20th century into one of the grandest, most enriching films of 2008.”
Time Out New York felt that “if you can let go of your memories of the novel and the outstanding 1981 miniseries, this is enjoyable enough as tasteful melodrama”.
And The Washington Post opined: “Still hard-hitting and dense, it’s a film whose ideal audience consists of younger viewers who haven’t seen the TV series and who therefore have nothing to compare it to.”
Roger Ebert, of The Chiacgo Sun-Times felt that it’s “a good, sound example of the British period drama; mid-range Merchant-Ivory, you could say”.
And Newsday concluded that it’s “[a] lush, bold, intellectual treatment of the Evelyn Waugh novel about Catholicism and nonconformity, which ventures where the fabled ’80s miniseries couldn’t”.
Not everyone was as enthusiastic, however. Entertainment Weekly had reservations, stating that “Brideshead Revisited is opulent and watchable, yet except for Thompson’s acting, it’s missing something – a grander, more ambivalent vision of the England it depicts dying out.
And The Hollywood Reporter felt that it’s “a handsomely appointed but oddly unaffecting adaptation”.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, wrote that: “If it’s a choice between the movie’s 135 minutes or the 659 minutes of the miniseries, I’d say it’s no choice at all. The shorter version is the one that seems long.”
And The New York Times concludes this overview with the stinging final line: “[It’s a] lazy, complacent film, which takes the novel’s name in vain.”
Brideshead Revisited is currently due to open in UK cinemas on October 3, 2008. Watch the trailer