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New "Brideshead Revisited" film opening 7/25/08 (spoilers)
southendmd:
Any Brideshead fans out there?
The Granada TV series came out just as I was coming out, so it will always have a special place in my heart.
I've been a little worried about the new film. The trailer looks awful , as if it turns the complex novel into a love triangle.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiX9CAuMF4[/youtube]
southendmd:
Here's a favorable review from Newsweek:
You Can Go Home Again
'Brideshead Revisited' was once a classic 11-part miniseries. A new film tells the tale in two hours.
By David Ansen | NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 18, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Jul 28, 2008
Anyone who fell in love with the landmark 11-part British TV series of "Brideshead Revisited" 26 years ago is likely to approach the movie version debuting next week with extreme trepidation. Not to mention all those who have fallen under the spell of Evelyn Waugh's opulent, elegiac 1945 novel. How could this rich work possibly be condensed into a film running a bit over two hours?
Director Julian Jarrold ("Becoming Jane") and screenwriters Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock clearly knew they'd be facing comparisons—Jarrold, not wanting to be influenced by the Granada TV series, claims not to have seen the original. They argue that this literary classic, like a Shakespeare play, needs to be reinterpreted for a new generation, re-evaluated with contemporary eyes.
In fact, more than any Waugh novel, "Brideshead" lends itself to different readings: what you take away from it says as much about your own obsessions and world view as it does about Waugh's intentions. Written during the privations of World War II, the book looks back to the '20s and '30s, memorializing the last gasp of the dying aristocratic order. Waugh's stand-in is the covetous, wide-eyed, middle-class painter Charles Ryder, who falls in love with the children of the Marchmain family, Roman Catholic aristocrats who invite him into their imposing ancestral home, Brideshead Castle.
According to Waugh, who converted to Catholicism in 1930, his theme was "the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters." Yet the primal "Brideshead" image to me is the one that adorned the paperback I read in college: the charming, decadent Sebastian Flyte carrying a teddy bear. For some it may be the grand estate itself and its real-life stand-in: Castle Howard, a setting so iconic in the series that the filmmakers used it again. For many who worshiped weekly at the "Brideshead" altar in 1982, the series was the apotheosis of a certain mandarin gay sensibility, even though the homosexual motifs were always unstated, and the nature of Charles's infatuation with Sebastian left ambiguous. I'd bet that many barely remember the issues of sin and sacrifice and Catholic guilt that lurk in the mystical depths of "Brideshead's" last act. For the non-Catholic reader, and for contemporary viewers, Waugh's spiritual themes don't quite take hold; it's as if he created characters too strong to fit the mold of their author's intentions. His artistry outshone his ideology.
The remarkable thing about Jarrold's movie is how much of the book it manages to capture. The focus has shifted: it's structured as a love triangle. Ryder (Matthew Goode, in the role that made Jeremy Irons a star) falls first for the dandy Sebastian (Ben Whishaw), who widens his worldly horizons, and then for his sophisticated, spiritually conflicted sister Julia (Hayley Atwell). Sebastian's sexual attraction to Charles has been made more explicit; his jealousy when he discovers (in a scene that's not in the novel) that Ryder and Julia are in love is the trauma that sends him spiraling into his alcoholic decline.
As Sebastian, the thin, dark-haired Whishaw is both the most riveting thing about the movie and the most problematic, for he has radically reinvented the character. Febrile, tightly wound and more overtly gay than the blond, debonair Anthony Andrews, Whishaw's vulnerable Sebastian seems doomed from the get-go. Jarrold's movie, rushing too fast through the halcyon days at Oxford, short-shrifts Sebastian's legendary charm.
Other omissions are painful but understandable: the extravagant, stuttering queen Anthony Blanche has been reduced to a cameo; young Cordelia barely registers; Ryder's father, played by John Gielgud on TV, has lost his best scenes. What remains, however, is formidable. Emma Thompson makes the iron-willed Lady Marchmain a figure both terrifying and sympathetic; Michael Gambon's lusty Lord Marchmain, who's abandoned his family for life in Venice with his mistress (Greta Scacchi), gets the most out of his brief appearances, and Atwell is a wonderfully sensual and sharp-edged Julia, torn between her love for Charles and her religious beliefs.
The toughest role, because it's so reactive, is Ryder himself. Because the film doesn't rely as heavily on voice-over to convey his inner thoughts, Goode faces a challenge illuminating the soul of this diffident, divided, ambitious man, whose own social and sexual aspirations even he doesn't fully understand. It's a solid, sensitive performance. He sounds remarkably like Irons, but he doesn't have Irons's quicksilver transparency, that ability to let us see the roiling feelings under Charles's formal English reserve.
Think of Jarrold's briskly paced, stylish abridgment as a fine introduction to Waugh's marvelously melancholy elegy. It brings these unforgettable characters to life again, and if it sends people back to the novel, and back to Charles Sturridge's classic TV series, all the better. There's room for more than one "Brideshead" in this far less glamorous day and age.
southendmd:
From the Telegraph. More ambiguity!
***
Brideshead Revisited 'will upset purists' with gay kiss
By Chris Hastings and Stephanie Plentl
Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 19/07/2008
The relationship between Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder has been the subject of intense speculation ever since the fateful day they met at Oxford University.
(Ben Whishaw as Sebastian Flyte, left, and Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder
Nicola Dove/Courtesy of Miramax Films)
But now a new film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited will out Sebastian Flyte as a homosexual and even feature a gay kiss between him and Charles.
In one controversial scene in the new £10 million film, which has its world premiere in New York on Tuesday, a love struck Sebastian attempts to kiss Charles on the mouth before his amorous advances are resisted.
The scene has been welcomed by some gay rights campaigners who have already dubbed the film “the most overtly” gay Brideshead ever.
But it is set to infuriate purists who insist that the relationship between the two friends has been distorted.
Brideshead Revisited tells the story of Charles Ryder and his infatuation with Lord Sebastian Flyte, his aristocratic family and their ancestral home, Brideshead.
The two men meet while students at Oxford and Ryder finds Flyte’s decadence and loucheness irresistible.
Although fans of the novel and the 1981 Granada television adaptation which starred Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews have debated the nature of the relationship between the two friends neither the book, which appeared in 1945, or the TV adaptation carry any overt references to homosexual feelings.
Andrew Davies, the Bafta winning dramatist who co-wrote the film’s script said: “I think it will probably upset the purists.
“But one thing we wanted to make clear was that Sebastian was gay and that Charles although terribly fond of him is heading in another direction sexually.
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“Waugh had a very skilful way of skating over the sordid details so we can imagine what we like about them.
“This ambivalence was probably the result of his own sexual ambivalence."
Kevin Loader, the film’s producer insisted that the tone of the new film is closer to the actual spirit of the novel than the 1981 television version which also starred Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom and John Gielgud.
Kevin Loader, the film’s producer said: “There is a lot less lounging around in punts in our version. I think people who have only seen the television adaptation are surprised when they get around to reading the book. I think there is no doubt that Sebastian is homosexual and there is a kiss in our version.
“The producers of the television version probably wanted to include such a scene back then. But that sort of thing was a lot more controversial in 1981 than it is today.”
The film’s director, Julian Jarrold however admitted that things weren’t so clear cut in the book.
“There is a level of ambiguity in the relationship between Charles and Sebastian in the book. Sebastian needs and wants Charles but it is veiled. It isn’t an explicit gay love story and I didn’t want to make it that."
But Frederic Raphael, the Oscar winning dramatist who wrote the films Darling, Far From The Madding Crowd and Eyes Wide Shut said: “It is not a terrible scandal of course but it is odd to embellish the novel because the eroticising is implausible. But in films nowadays big things have to happen immediately or else the audience gets bored.”
The new film concentrates on the triangle of Julia, Charles and Sebastian who are played by Hayley Atwell, Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode.
It co-stars double Oscar winner Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, Michael Gambon as Lord Marchmain and Greta Scacchi as his mistress.
In a further departure from the book, the character of Julia joins Charles and Sebastian on a trip to Venice. Castle Howard, who famously played Brideshead in the TV adaptation, again stars in the film.
The idea of a movie was first mooted in 2002 with a screenplay by Davies and a cast that included Jude Law, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. But that proposal never materialised.
Davies’s script was then rewritten by Jeremy Brock for the now completed film. Both men share a writing credit.
The film is released in the United States next week and in Britain in September.
MaineWriter:
Here's a nice picture:
Accompanying article can be found here:
http://www.dandyism.net/?p=978
L
belbbmfan:
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 22, 2008, 12:57:04 pm ---Any Brideshead fans out there?
The Granada TV series came out just as I was coming out, so it will always have a special place in my heart.
I've been a little worried about the new film. The trailer looks awful , as if it turns the complex novel into a love triangle.
--- End quote ---
Me! Me!
I loved, loved the tv series. I really awoke the anglofile in me. I'll definitely watch the movie too. I didn't even know a movie was in the works.
Another book I need to reread!
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