| Overall Grade: |
F |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
C |
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| Direction: |
F |
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| Visuals: |
C |
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Brideshead (Anti-Catholic Remix)
by Y K (movies profile)
Jul 26, 2008
50
of
64 people found this review helpful
This film is an appalling mutilation of the spirit of Waugh's book. In the book, Waugh's characters are saved from total dissolution by their Catholicism -- or, as the case may be, by the remnants of their Catholicism. In the film, it's Catholicism that undoes them.
It's hard to explain a misreading as gross as this, but Director Julian Jarrold has apparently decided to "update" the story so that it appeals to the type of upper-middle-brow, secular consumerist who finds religious sensibility to be an inexplicable and dangerous form of psychological infirmity. This was not quite Charles Ryder's stance in the book, nor was it Waugh's (far from it). Jarrold also seems to have dispensed with Waugh's Sebastian Flyte in nearly everything but name and replaced him with the overtly homosexual Anthony Blanche. Apart from doing the Gay Mafia's ideological dirty work, the problem here is that there is absolutely nothing appealing in Jerrold's synthesized mutant: why on Earth "Sebastian Blanche" would captivate Charles Ryder (or us) is never made clear. As far as motivation goes, we thus have to assume that Ryder is simply a social climber gunning for Brideshead through any channel that's open to him. Again, not quite Waugh's take on the matter.
To return to the film's anti-religious bias: there was something exotic and unattainable in the posh Catholicism Waugh held up for most of his English readers to view -- almost as if he were saying that the High Church aestheticism of Anglo-Catholics was really quite philistine compared to the True Church. By becoming a Catholic, Waugh the aesthete took an extra step into bold singularity, one that his fellow Anglo-Catholic aesthetes were afraid or unwilling to take. This aesthetic appeal of Catholicism is a note entirely lost on Jarrold. For him, Catholicism (or religion in general) is a repellent domain of fundamentalist simplicity and narrow-mindedness rather than a harmonious ordering of moral complexity. One has to wonder, however, whether it's religion, or Jarrold's view of religion, that's simplistic.
Some will wish to heap praise on the film's visuals. The filmmakers, however, had a template to work with -- the 12-part BBC rendition of Brideshead that appeared in 1982 -- and their work here is not particularly original.
In short, Jarrold has turned Waugh's story on its head. I can't recommend it -- unless, of course, you really need a dose of anti-Catholic and anti-religious sentiment (in which case, it perfectly fits the bill).
Regards, |
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