Brideshead Revisited

The 1981 TV adaptation casts such a spell over our collective memory that any film will struggle to compete.

On the other hand, no novel is that sacred and just think how many helpings of Oliver Twist we’ve been served up over the years.

The 2008 version of Brideshead Revisited looks gorgeous. The sun-kissed splendours of an English summer, the magnificence of Castle Howard and the golden glow of Venice all help to create a beguiling vision of a vanished world.

Rising British stars Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw are perfectly cast as Charles and Sebastian. It is an intelligent, respectable literary adaptation and yet somehow the book’s great themes and conflicts seem to slip through its fingers.

Spanning two decades, the film criss-crosses past and present as we follow the tale of bright, middle-class boy Charles Ryder (Goode) and his infatuation with an aristocratic family and their home Brideshead.

An aspiring painter, Charles is a wide-eyed innocent when he arrives at Oxford in the Twenties. Lord Sebastian Flyte (Whishaw) is instantly smitten by him and introduces Charles to a world of privilege.

Charles even wins the approval of Sebastian’s formidable mother, devoutly Catholic Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), who is convinced he could be a good influence on her son.

Sebastian falls in love with Charles but it becomes obvious that Charles has his sights set on Sebastian’s sister Julia (Hayley Atwell).

A trip to Venice will have far reaching consequences for all of them. Longing and heartbreak are at the core of this version of Brideshead but the intensity of the romantic triangle is undermined by the fact that Sebastian fades from the picture and Atwell’s Julia is a rather insipid creature. The movie’s attitude towards religion is also far from clear.

Lady Marchmain’s staunch Catholicism is seen to destroy the lives of her children; denying Julia any chance of happiness and sending the gay Sebastian hurtling towards a life of booze-sodden self-loathing. Yet both achieve some kind of salvation through religion or devotion to good deeds.

Charles is the outsider at Brideshead because he cheerily declares himself to be an atheist but even he seems to have accepted some sense of the spiritual by the end of the film. No wonder there is confusion. The pleasures of Brideshead lie in the sumptuous cinematography of Jess Hall, the witty dialogue and a fabulous cast.

There are a number of supporting performances to cherish, with Patrick Malahide bringing a droll whimsicality to the role of Charles’s father Edward Ryder, Michael Gambon fearlessly following in Laurence Olivier’s footsteps as Lord Marchmain and Greta Scacchi shining as his mistress Cara.

Thompson almost steals the show as she conveys the iron will behind the kindly façade of  Lady Marchmain. Thompson has a natural warmth that she uses to deadly effect. Lady Marchmain appears to be a caring, concerned individual but that demeanour conceals an unrepentant monster.

Whishaw makes Sebastian a fragile, haunted victim of the times and his family, and Goode hits just the right note of blithe detachment as Charles.

There is a great deal to savour and admire in this Brideshead but it is a picture that stubbornly refuses to touch the heart.

OUR VERDICT: 3/5

(Cert 12A; 132 mins)