Starring Matthew Goode, Hayley Atwell. Written by Jeremy Brock and
Andrew Davies, from the novel by Evelyn Waugh. Directed by Julian
Jarrold. (14A) 132 min. Opens July 25. See
Interview.
Early on in Brideshead Revisited, to-the-manor born Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell) refers to would-be painter Charles Ryder’s visit with her flamboyant brother Sebastian at their country house as a “bit queer.” It’s a line weighted with wink-wink-nudge-nudge significance. It’s also a line that was not in Evelyn Waugh’s original novel. Nor was the bit where Charles (Matthew Goode) and Sebastian (Ben Whishaw), two soulmates aligned in their love of beauty and a distrust of the latter’s upper-class upbringing and its attendant Catholic guilt, share an outdoors open-mouthed kiss.
It’s a fleeting scene, but it’s going to be a sticking point for fans of the novel (and of the beloved 1981 BBC miniseries). Actually, as far as fidelity to its source material goes, Julian Jarrold’s film is one big sticking point: Waugh’s ambivalent but sympathetic treatment of Catholicism has been turned by screenwriters Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock into an excoriation of religious dogma; Julia’s role in the first half of the story has been expanded; Sebastian’s presence in the second half has been reduced.
Purists will be outraged, and even those viewers willing to meet the film on its own terms (it should be pointed out that the Waugh estate signed off on the script’s changes) may be underwhelmed. Brideshead Revisited is handsomely produced and extremely well-acted: Emma Thompson has a magisterial extended cameo as Brideshead’s domineering matriarch; Goode shows shadings suggesting that he played the wrong part in Match Point; Whishaw swishes with aplomb. Yet Jarrold shows little imagination in his staging. One newly minted plot twist plays like an extravagantly lit outtake from Dawson’s Creek — not a good comparison.