The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
New "Brideshead Revisited" film opening 7/25/08 (spoilers)
southendmd:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on July 23, 2008, 01:45:14 pm ---However, thanks to Paul's post referencing A Separate Peace, I got to wondering, Who is John Heyl? I'd never heard of him, but just look at him in that photo with Parker Stevenson! Unfortunately, all ImDB has on him is the one reference to A Separate Peace. No biographical information, nothing. I shall have to do a Google search, I guess.
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I believe IMDb said that all the actors except Parker Stevenson were actual students at Exeter.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 23, 2008, 01:54:59 pm ---I believe IMDb said that all the actors except Parker Stevenson were actual students at Exeter.
--- End quote ---
Could be. I just searched for the name. I didn't check what IMDb had to say about the film. I guess he didn't go on to a film career. More's the pity. ...
southendmd:
A review from Variety:
by Dennis Harvey
A finely wrought, Merchant-Ivory-style Brit-lit adaptation rather curiously unloaded by Miramax smack amid Stateside summer tentpole season -- just before fall fest season and the unveiling of awards contenders -- "Brideshead Revisited" offers lush and compelling drama drawn from Evelyn Waugh's beloved novel. Purists may blanch at the screenplay's changes to the source material's narrative fine points, but its spirit survives intact. Fond memories of the 1981 miniseries likely will only help prod curious fans into theaters, suggesting respectable B.O. on both sides of the Atlantic.
Scenarists Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock (like director Julian Jarrold, all veteran adapters of literary and historical tales for film and TV) have created a few bold shortcuts that will invariably distress folks who justifiably view the Granada TV mini as one of the truest page-to-screen transfers ever. But then, it had 11 hours in which to reproduce every nuance. And this version's changes, in the end, serve to communicate the novel's complexities within a viable, theatrical-friendly format without ever appearing to rush or coarsen its general arc. (Still, one wouldn't guess this from the film's trailer, which strains to make it look like a pulse-pounding intrigue in period duds, a la "Vanity Fair" or "The Scarlet Letter.")
Allowing auds sufficient retro-aristo-lifestyle sumptuousness for their dollar, yet exhibiting admirable, intelligent directorial restraint, this "Brideshead" is mainstream arthouse fare par excellence. Tale is framed, as in the novel, by the stationing of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) as a WWII British Army officer in a lavish country estate-turned-temporary military base -- a location he's visited before under very different circumstances.
Bulk of the narrative is set earlier, in the 1920s, as middle-class Charles commences studies at Oxford and falls into the company of fellow student Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), whose impulsive hedonism and affectionate nature charm him. When Sebastian shows Charles the extraordinary ancestral grounds he grew up in, the latter is further seduced by such sheer magnificence.
But as Sebastian is too well mannered to say outright, Brideshead Castle is, for him, a prison of instilled guilt, to be escaped by any means possible -- which, in his case, turns out to be alcohol. With Sebastian's coolly alluring sister Julia (Hayley Atwell) also in residence, the fun comes to a sharp end with the dreaded arrival of their mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) -- a devout, most bitterly husband-abandoned Catholic.
In the hope that the visitor's solidity might steady her son, Lady Marchmain encourages him to accompany the sibs on a trip to visit their father, Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon), and his mistress, Cara (Greta Scacchi), in Venice. This is another idyllic time, though the growing attraction between Charles and Julia deals Sebastian a crushing blow that sends him sliding further into alcoholism.
As the years move onward, Sebastian, Charles and Julia drift far from one another, yet remain bound by conflicted secular yearnings and sacred guilt.
While the film offers the closest thing to a gay love story in mainstream cinema since "Brokeback Mountain," it wouldn't be quite right to call the Charles-Sebastian dynamic homoerotic: True to the novel, what Cara terms a "romantic friendship" is tangible more as true love than as mere sexual attraction, no matter that Sebastian suffers the stigma of feeling both.
Unfolding at a pace that never feels rushed despite the compacted runtime, pic clearly portrays the Flyte offspring as forever crippled by the sense of sin imbued in them by their mother. Yet what plays for some time as a fairly harsh condemnation of oppressive religious morality finally becomes a poignant acknowledgement of faith, encapsulating Charles' new attitude toward it in a beautifully low-key close.
Goode provides a fine center of gravity as the middle-class tourist in heady but toxic upper-class realms. Thompson superbly etches a complex, eventually tragic portrait in her relatively few scenes.
Whishaw and Atwell are fine, but leave perhaps a slightly less distinctive stamp on their roles than the series' Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick, respectively.
Without tipping into excess eye candy, the design contribs are all one could wish for, handsomely captured in Jess Hall's widescreen lensing. Adrian Johnson's graceful score is another notable plus in a package that, in every department, approaches the material with understated respect rather than stylistic flash.
Reportedly, Paul Bettany, Jude Law and Jennifer Connelly were attached until helmer David Yates was poached for last year's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." One can say, in this case, that settling for the B team turned out well.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on July 23, 2008, 01:45:14 pm ---However, thanks to Paul's post referencing A Separate Peace, I got to wondering, Who is John Heyl? I'd never heard of him, but just look at him in that photo with Parker Stevenson! Unfortunately, all ImDB has on him is the one reference to A Separate Peace. No biographical information, nothing. I shall have to do a Google search, I guess.
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Jeff--just for you!
John Heyl and Parker Stevenson
Aloysius J. Gleek:
First, I thought we could set the mood--with Geoffrey Burgon's Brideshead Theme; click and listen:
http://www.imeem.com/agripina/music/HEADCEXH/geoffrey_burgon_brideshead_theme/
Ah. That's better.
Now:
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 23, 2008, 01:10:05 pm -----winter 1982: I turned on the TV, a little black-and-white set in the kitchen, and was dumbstruck. There, I saw two very handsome young men walking in a garden, arm in arm. I was hooked, not even knowing what it was. Consulting the TV guide, I saw that it was being repeated later that evening, so I watched it from the start. The language, the visuals, the performances. Ahh.
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Paul, I'm about ten years older than you. I had read the book, and, in fact, had been anxiously waiting some time for the Granada production to start. But--Yes. Exactly.
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 23, 2008, 12:53:40 pm ---[Anthony] Andrews, however, felt he was better suited for the part of Sebastian Flyte. Jeremy Irons, [Derek] Granger's first choice for Sebastian, preferred to play Ryder, so the two actors swapped roles.
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Thank god!
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 23, 2008, 12:53:40 pm ---Laurence Olivier was offered his choice of roles in either Lord Marchmain or Edward Ryder (which ultimately went to John Gielgud). Olivier picked Lord Marchmain, but later regretted the choice as he realized that Edward Ryder was actually a much stronger role.
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Again, thank god--that this time the actors didn't switch!
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 23, 2008, 12:53:40 pm ---Also, I remember hearing, perhaps on the DVD extras, that because of a lengthy tech strike, filming was considerably delayed. It was during that time that Laurence Olivier and Claire Bloom became available. Also, the script was re-thought: rather than the original 6-hour length, it was decided to essentially film the whole story, all 13 hours. I believe this was when they included Charles's voice-over, essentially verbatim from the novel.
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Olivier and Bloom were--well, perfect. As in Brokeback, the Stars Were Aligned (and I don't mean film stars).
But now we are to see a two-hour version--with Julia inserted into the Venice sequence?? What can one say, except--ugh!
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 23, 2008, 02:51:38 pm ---Reportedly, Paul Bettany, Jude Law and Jennifer Connelly were attached until helmer David Yates was poached for last year's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." One can say, in this case, that settling for the B team turned out well.
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Paul Bettany, Jude Law and Jennifer Connelly? As two Oxford undergraduates and sister/chum? That must have been the 'G Team'--'G' for Geriatric.
As for the actual troupe, with Goode, Whishaw and Atwell--it's 'B' for Better Luck Next Time...
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