Brideshead Revisited

Directed by Julian Jarrold, starring Matthew Goode, Hayley Atwell, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson

Why revisit it? There is something pretty superfluous about this handsome-looking, workmanlike but fundamentally uninspired and obtuse adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's resplendent 1945 novel. It offers no compelling reasons for a screen revival, and the look and feel are nakedly derived from Charles Sturridge's tremendous 1981 version for Granada television, right down to using Castle Howard once again for the eponymous country house.

Now it's Matthew Goode playing Charles Ryder: a decent performance from this excellent newcomer. As an officer in the second world war, the ageing and cynical Ryder finds himself billeted at a country house which he does not at first recognize. But when he does, he - and we - are whooshed upstream along the Isis of time, back to 1920s Oxford where he had fallen under the spell of aesthete and exquisite Lord Sebastian Flyte, played by Ben Whishaw. Sebastian takes him to this marvelous pile called Brideshead, where Ryder falls in love both with the house and the eccentric Catholic family. Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon) is in Venice with his mistress; Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) is back at home and her private mortification at the failure of her marriage has redoubled the fierce, unforgiving faith imposed on her children. Julia Flyte (Hayley Attwell) is the beautiful sister with whom Charles's tragically mistimed affections are finally engaged.

The adaptation by Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock takes some liberties with the novel to create a simplified, sexualized Julia-Sebastian-Charles love triangle. Nothing so very wrong with that, necessarily, but the movie fails to make us care about these people. Kingsley Amis once said his difficulty with Brideshead Revisted was not that these people were behaving badly, but boringly. On the page, that isn't true, but here on the big screen, it turns out to be an insuperable problem. The Guardian

(China Daily 10/14/2008 page20)