What Places In A Bride’s Head Keep Being Revisited?

This is a review of the 2008 movie “Brideshead Revisited.”

5 out of 5 stars.

This movie could not be improved.

Lovers of the original novel and the famous 1981 British Television Mini-Series starring, among others, Jeremy Irons, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Lawrence Olivier may enjoy advocating that the other versions of the story are better.  And to those arguments, I will happily concede.  Nevertheless, this latest 2008 film version is exceptionally good.

While the world was all focused on World War II, Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh chose to spend his time writing this story in 1944, a story about boundaries and priorities in love relationships - boundaries between mothers and children, between family and non-family, between husbands and wives, between spouses and lovers, between social classes, between religions, and between ideologies.

It is a story about the relationship between religion (Catholicism more specifically) and guilt.  The story repeatedly, in each of the main character relationships, asks this type of question:

What philosophical priorities, religious or otherwise, would you put above your love for someone close to you?  The sophisticated examination of those ideological priorities in the story’s characters’ relationships is fascinating and revealing.

The full title of the original book is telling of the author’s likely intents:

Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

This novel is an examination of social, cultural and religious structures, hierarchies, and “trumping” considerations.  The word “profane” has several definitions, but generally it means non-religious, or non-sacred (not subordinating to religious precepts).  The movie (probably even more than the original novel) attempts to portray a sympathetic portrait of the profane considerations, more than the sacred ones.

I don’t know if this screenplay is close to the original novel in plot or emphasis.  And while I do care about that question, I don’t choose to critique a movie solely because it deviates from its source material.  I loved Emma Thompson’s Sense & Sensibility and that movie deviated liberally from the book.

This movie is aimed at breaking every empathetic viewer’s heart in one way or another – not out of malice, but rather to emphasize the social conflicts which not only effected middle 20th century culture, but also still effect modern culture.

At the same time, the movie is very funny.  The acting is executed with exceptional social awareness and sharp pitch.  The direction is marvelous.  The set lighting and underlit dark interiors create consistent and apropos emotional environments.  The hand-held camera techniques are well-done and timely, breaking out of more common static camera expectations associated with other BBC productions.  The costuming is lovely.  The musical score is first rate, not overbearing, melodramatic, nor distracting.

Emma Thompson is excellent, playing a character with sufficient power and resolve to blind herself to any critiques.

Matthew Goode plays Charles Ryder superbly.  Other actors would have tried to have been the center of each of Charles Ryder’s scenes (he is the “lead” role).  But Goode makes the superb choice to play a character who is the eyes of the story more than the focus of the story.  That acting (and directing) choice is consistent with Charles Ryder’s character.  Ryder expresses early on in the movie that he intends to be an artist who reveals the emotional context in what he sees around him.

Hayley Atwell and Ben Whishaw, who play Julia and Sebastian Flyte, also make excellent and informed acting choices.  Atwell displays understated conflicts between passion, duty, religion, and love.  She is neither a pawn nor a queen.  She knows the consequences of the choices she makes, but still chooses them.  Whishaw plays the correct tone for his character.  He is neither too flamboyant nor too charismatic.  Yet clearly, he has lived a lifetime of suppression – being madly in love with people and things he knows will always be unrequited toward him.

I will buy this movie when it becomes available on DVD.  And I look forward to studying it repeatedly.  I thank all the people who worked so hard to create this film.  I love this film.

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