| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A |
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| Acting: |
A |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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Brideshead Revisited, Again
by Jim B (movies profile)
Jul 28, 2008
14
of
25 people found this review helpful
Brideshead Revisited the Film is a condensed version of the Magnum Opus by Evelyn Waugh, so don’t expect the full long arduous tale. The Film is around two hours and is magnificent to watch every moment. The photography is stunning as it should be in this romantic story. The films Costuming and Set designs are hand in glove being glorious to unobtrusive without detracting from the story telling.
Director Julian Jarrold and co-writers Jeremy Brock, Andrew Davis investigate male homosexuality in this period piece, however ambiguous you would like to think it, it appears in this film, along with the destruction Catholicism has on youth and the free spirit, calling homosexuality a “phase” and a “sin”. They investigate in the peripheral, schooling of the elite privileged young men who are being groomed for power in England through prestigious Oxford, their proclivities and sexual game playing and ultimately their gay tendencies, soon to graduate with their degrees in the spiritual falsehoods of nature. Young Lord Sebastian Flyte, played by Mr. Ben Whishaw to perfection, rebels against his family and their religious lives, for one as a confused gay youth/young man and second as how the controlling religious power injures him while it gives his mother her life through his conditioning and conditioned responses. Unlike Lady Julia his sister, who is unable to break these chains of Catholicism in her life and is pulled back into its Nave and sacrificed for the good of the family, Sebastian has run away trying to lose his past, eschewing Mother Lady Marchmain, played well by Emma Thompson; much like his father played by Michael Gambon who also runs away, but in the end all become a servant to God and religion anyway. Director Jarrold succeeds in bringing to life the power of Catholicism and spirituality, making choices showing the ill and the beauty twined in our lives; The Flyte family of Lord Marchmain a converted Anglican, though extremely wealthy, and with all the domestic help around the Flyte family, they too must serve a master, and that master is a Catholic God. Charles Ryder (the eyes of the book and Director), feels the cool Holy Water from the Font but doesn’t allow us to be blessed whether you believe in a Catholicism or not; makes you question religion’s rituals and their importance in your life in contemporary times and the politics it plays in your decisions you’re making today along with Fait.
The openness of the photography gives this film breathing room and makes it all the more watchable in the urbane cloying and cloistered atmosphere of the ultra privileged with their superior airs at Brideshead England. The players, Ben Whishaw, Matthew Goode, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, and Hayley Atwell are all terrific in this well made film. Jarrold continues the Waugh sentiment that likens the fall of the Marchmain empire to the collapse of Europe from its lack of spirituality and its thirst for adventure leaving behind the trust in God and his big plan. |
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