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Bideshead Revisted Reconsidered
August 1, 2008 | 1 Comment
Victor Morton says the new cinematic release of Brideshead Revisted is not nearly as mind-numbingly awful as the trailers suggested it would.
But within those limitations, the new BRIDESHEAD REVISITED isn’t bad at all — preserving Waugh’s basic plot architecture and structure. It doesn’t cop out with the death of Lord Marchmain, and though its effects on Charles are cut out, Julia’s face shows real relief. Lady Marchmain, thanks be to The Great Emma Thompson, is never caricatured and is portrayed more as overprotective than the evil tyrant of the trail and is frankly often right (Sebastian “gets drunk to escape his conscience” and she disowns Charles, not as arbitrarily as the trailer leads you to believe, but for sound reason — enabling an alcoholic). She is often spoken badly of, but that’s in the book too. And Aloysius the Teddy Bear makes several appearances.
Regardless of how Whishaw played Sebastian, there is very little gay passion in the film (I’d say none). The notorious “kiss on the mouth” is low-key friendly and half-drunk impulsive rather than passionate or sexual; and nothing comes of it, in either direction (sex or “panic”). And surely, if we’re gonna say Sebastian is “gay” in our sense, what does it mean that Sebastian is an effeminate, arrested-development, mother-dominated alcoholic who dies of a wasting disease and says the word “Mother” like Norman Bates in PSYCHO? This conception of Sebastian is rather limited — the novel’s Sebastian is charismatic and well-loved; this film turns him into a Wildean/Des Esseintes outsider (we even get a taunt about “sodomites” in the film’s first minutes). But it isn’t pushed too hard or into obviously anachronistic territories of gay consciousness.
Well, that’s a relief. Gotta love Victor’s closing line, though.
In short, this BRIDESHEAD is basically a Catholic movie made by post-Christians trying their durndest not to be post-Christians.
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[...] Victor Morton says the new cinematic release of Brideshead Revisted is not nearly as mind-numbingly awful as the trailers suggested it would. But within those limitations, the new BRIDESHEAD REVISITED isn’t bad at all — preserving Waugh’s basic plot architecture and structure. It doesn’t cop out with the death of Lord Marchmain, and though its effects on Charles are cut out, Julia’s face shows real relief. Lady Marchmain, thanks be to The Great Emma Thompson, is never caricatured and is portra Source: Bideshead Revisted Reconsidered [...]