Revisiting a Classic

EvelynWaugh’s meditation on faith and its absence, and the varieties of love anddesire, found a new audience in the 1980s through a British televisionproduction of Brideshead Revisited.Readers of Waugh’s novel and fans of the 11-part miniseries alike will findsome of their favorite bits missing from the new film adaptation. Britishdirector Julian Jarrold should be commended, however, for intelligentlycondensing an emotionally rich story spanning two decades into a two-hourmovie. Some of my favorite lines were edited, it’s true, but the main themesand memorable scenes for the most part remain.

The film is arranged as a flashback within aflashback, but the story’s genesis occurs at Oxford in the 1920s. The protagonist, CharlesRyder (Matthew Goode in the role that launched Jeremy Irons), is a first-yearstudent and the uncertain product of a penny-pinching if prosperous, emotionallygrim and rationalistic middle-class father. Oxford in those years was a sheltered gardenwhere eccentricity flourished. Charles glimpses the first love of his life,Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), reclined in a punt on the canal that flowsthrough the university, clutching a teddy bear and sipping champagne from a flute.One of Charles’ tragedies is that his second and final love, Julia (HayleyAtwell), was Sebastian’s sister.

Unsure of himself and trying to fit in,exploring emotions and yearnings he may never have known before, Charles isoverawed when Sebastian drives him to the family estate, Brideshead, in hisspeeding roadster. The sprawlingfiefdom is dotted with fountains crowned with neo-classical sculpture anddominated by a domed manor large enough to seat both houses of parliament.Charles gawks like a first-time visitor to New Yorkcoming upon the EmpireStateBuilding.The reign of families like the Flytes is already entering its twilight. Thecost of World War I was unrecoverable for Britain’s upper class; some ofBrideshead’s halls are shuttered, the statues covered with drop cloths. Still,it remains a grand life for those who live there.

Unlike Charles’ upbringing, which tried toreduce the complexity of existence to a logical equation, the Flytes are guidedby a faith that makes claims on their every thought, word and deed. Sebastian’sfamily members are Roman Catholic, a religion forced underground in Britain duringthe Protestant Reformation and whose adherents were finally granted full civilrights only a century before the story begins. The memory of persecution, ofpracticing their religion in secret, only hardened the family’s resolve.

The erotic life Sebastian led was beyond thebounds of Catholic propriety. An acknowledged sinner in his moral universe, hisconscience is consoled by confession and dulled by drink. By all appearancesJulia is thoroughly modern, driving her own car and propositioning Charles withthe line, “Be an angel and light me one.” He gently places the cigarettebetween her open, moistened lips. The family is complex to say the least. Theirmother, Lady Marchmain (played with too much chill by Emma Thompson), is asoft-spoken but firm paragon of aristocratic and Catholic rectitude. LordMarchmain (Michael Gambon), however, fled Englandyears earlier for the palazzo in Venicehe shares with his Italian mistress.

Waugh’s novel was suffused with regret,sadness over time’s passage, for loss of innocence and loss of everything thatonce held the world together. Although beautifully visualized and generallywell acted by a cast of veterans and newcomers, the new Brideshead falls short in viewing the novel through a limited lens.The film sees only the personal tragedy of Charles and the Flytes, leavingWaugh’s wider implications about a society in decline outside the frame.