Brideshead Revisited (2008)

As with any film which follows a beloved mini-series it is nearly impossible to escape the shadow. When watching this film you'll find yourself constantly comparing it to the mini-series and more often than not the memory of the mini-series comes out ahead.

That being said, I still very much enjoyed the film. As with other recent English remakes (Pride & Prejudice, BBC's Sense & Sensibility) you really appreciate the beauty of modern film making. The cinematography, the score, and the ever beautiful Castle Howard, Venice, and Oxford alone are worth the watching in my opinion. There are also some great performances. Matthew Goode's Charles rivals that of Jeremy Iron's, Hayley Atwell's Julia (in a more central role than that of the mini-series) was also quite good. I also found myself rather enjoying Charles' wife Celia (Anna Madeley) even in such a small role.

The real failure of the film seems to be the difficulty with compressing 11 hours into 2. Everything is forced to move faster and the more quite, gentle, and simple scenes are lost. What's left then is a distillation of the most dramatic moments. As a result the film loses the subtlety of the mini-series. The religious bits are played up a bit too much and makes the characters slightly unbelievable. Emma Thompson is great as always, but her character of Lady Marchmain as written is too over bearing, too controlling, too inhuman. The character of Sebastian is louder than in the mini-series and becomes jaded before you care much for him. Indeed, I didn't find myself caring particularly much for any of the characters except perhaps Charles.

Still, if you don't have 11 hours on hand to spend watching the mini-series, this is a suitable substitute and is worth watching at least once at any rate. As long as you don't go in expecting an equal to the mini-series you'll enjoy it and may even find a moment or two which improves upon the original.

Fmovies: I went to watch "Brideshead Revisited" without read Evelyn Waugh's novel and not knowing much about what it was so my opinions will be reserved exclusively about my thoughts about the movie, no kinds of comparisons whatsoever.

The movie tells the story of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) an artist remembering his involvement with the owners of the Brideshead estate, the aristocratic and Catholic Flyte family. He meets the drunk and rebel Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) and his enigmatic sister Julia (Hayley Atwell). Charles got romantically involved with both brother and sister (a challenge for viewers like me who haven't read the book and didn't understand the characters motivation especially those from Charles). And in the middle of all this there's the religious mother of the Flyte family (played by Emma Thompson) and their absent father living in Venice (played by Michael Gambon).

Looking to the film as a whole I think (and everyone's entitled to have their own opinion) that it is almost empty with nothing much to say, nothing much to show and it's very difficult to understand what the director wanted, what the writers wanted. Is it a story about a period or the story of a confused man? We know a man and his life then he meets this rich and complicated family, gets involved romantically with brother and sister, he doesn't really knows what love is and keeps going with his life. So what's the point?

The ambitions and motivations of the characters are uneasy, barely visible on the text written and I assume that only those who read the book might understand some of the things presented. About the relationship between Charles and Sebastian it was a weak presentation, something that sounded important to the story but in the end drove the viewer confused. They were sexually involved or it was just fooling around? I was expecting something like "Maurice" a powerful and difficult love story between two men set in a period similar to the "Brideshead".

Speaking of "Maurice" it reminds me that "Brideshead Revisited" needed a director like James Ivory to conduct this film more brilliantly and with a better screenplay. This material on the hands of Merchant Ivory would be fantastic, perhaps even winning a Oscar. The costumes and the art direction were excellent but a little bit eclipsed by a dark cinematography.

Besides the good technical aspects of the film it is watchable because of the good cast. Matthew Goode proves here that he can be a great lead man on a film; Emma Thompson was excellent and got the best part in the film; my only complaint comes from Ben Whishaw, who was good but the delicacy delivered by his character was excessive in some moments in which I couldn't care for his character, perhaps a bad touch coming from the screenplay.

It's another good case of a good movie that could be greater than it is. Needed a better director, a better writer and definitely a better screenplay. For a film with almost three hours it's very empty in substance. More cowbell here! 8/10

P.S.: Rewatched in 2017, and I'll keep most of my thoughts on it just as the first time of seeing it. It grows a little on the viewer due to its important themes about social/cultural/economical clashes and the influence rich people have on less fortuned people of whom they somewhat depend on in difficult times. Gotta admit those themes were greatly presented.

It's attributed to just about everybody - from Ginger Rogers to Milan Kundera - and it sounds so right: "There are no small parts, only small actors."

If you want proof and a real understanding of the adage, revisit "Brideshead Revisited," and behold the miracle of Emma Thompson's Lady Marchmain, sucking the life out of anything and anybody she touches, and Michael Gambon's delightfully dissolute Lord Marchmain. She has about 10 minutes on the screen, he perhaps four, and yet their characters will follow you out of the theater, and stay with you at length.

Thompson's work is especially dazzling because the mean, sanctimonious character is so clearly alien to the actress (in fact, I suspected miscasting when I first heard of her assignment) and also as the character is so exaggerated, almost a caricature. And yet, Thompson gives the challenge her all, and walks away with it; the performance has Best Supporting Actress written all over it.

It's difficult to believe that the man you see as Marchmain is the same actor who was the "Singing Detective" (of the superb BBC series, not the Robert Downey Jr. mishap). Gambon has a range as wide as all outdoors, and you never ever see effort in the performance. His amiable Marchmain - subtly hinting at a complex character under the surface - has a physical similarity to Gambon's Uncle Vanya on the London stage, but otherwise, it's a unique creation.

What else is there to this new "edition" of "Brideshead"? A great deal, but only if you're among those who missed both Evelyn Waugh's novel and the wonderful Granada TV realization 27 long years ago - Irons! Gielgud! Olivier! - how can you compete with that? So, if it's a first-time visit, see the movie by all means; if you can recite lines from the book or the TV series, you can survive without the new version.

In 135 minutes, the film is handling well what the TV series did so completely in - yes - 13 HOURS. Obviously, except for the basic story line (script by Jeremy Brock, of "The Last King of Scotland"), this is a different kind of animal, still "leisurely" enough, but unable to luxuriate in the smallest details as the series did. The director is Julian Jarrold, and he is doing far better than in his recent "Becoming Jane," keeps the story moving in a smooth fashion.

As to the leading roles in the film, they are all well acted, but without great impact. Matthew Goode is Charles Ryder, the focal character; Ben Whishaw is the slightly over-flamboyant Sebastian Flyte (who needs understating more than exaggerating - Anthony Andrews' performance in the TV series was exactly right); Hayley Atwell is Sebastian's sister (and rival for Charles' affection).

One amazing thing about "Brideshead" is how this story from a different time, about characters from a different world, remains interesting and meaningful. It's almost as if Waugh's work was bulletproof - not that these filmmakers were less than respectful to the author. A better test would be a Eurotrash opera version, heaven forfend.

Brideshead Revisited fmovies. Having seen the 1981 mini-series of the same name I have to admit that I am spoiled on what the way this movie SHOULD have turned out. The 1981 mini-series captured everything from the book, including the true purpose of the movie - as a glimpse into the complicated lives of a group of English high society citizens, their Catholic religion, and the very subtle way they communicate strong points to each other. This last point, the subtlety, is of highest importance because the character development that comes along with it makes the original mini-series. The movie version has none of this. The characters are just crude summations and dim reflections of the complex beings presented in the mini-series. The entire point of the book is completely lost by this rushed compilation of scenes. None of the characters are developed thoroughly, even the main ones. The audience never connects with the lives of these people and certainly isn't enveloped in their world. I don't really have one good thing to say about this movie... it is an insult to the book and mini-series. I highly recommend that you see the mini-series, despite it being 11+ hours long, because only with that investment of time do you really see the original intention of this story.

I have never read the book or seen the miniseries, so my experience wasn't clouded by already existing expectations and assumptions of the characters. Instead I was awaiting a first, and therefore unbiased look into the world of Brideshead.

As a film, it is okay bordering on good and solid. The performances are strong enough to keep the audience interested, but they do not keep us enthralled. The leads are savvy and sexy in their own rights, but they lack true appeal as performers. They can come off as rather dull in certain scenes, but in others they pull out a subtle presence that is called for in intimate, or more emotion scenes. This inconsistence was bothersome and hindered the overall telling of the story. The one presence that is felt, but is far too short is that of Emma Thompson. As the matriarchal head of the family, she is brutal and works well with the one dimensional writing she was given. If they had focused more on her, we would have been able to understand the tortured minds of Julia and Sebastian better. Instead they have Julia and Sebastian describe her to the audience, which keeps us from getting close enough to realize what deformed her mind to begin with.

Charles is, at times to weak and unsure to be accepted as someone we want to see happy. We end up being unsure of his character's intention, and not in a mysterious, purposeful way, but in a, "the film-making is too unclear" way. Is Charles just a social climber whose dreams are dashed by his wants and Atheist ways? Or is he a moral soul lost in the pull of Brideshead's condemning Catholic trappings? This is the major flaw to the film, Charles is never exposed.

Small framing problems and out-of-style shots hampered the visual appeal, but with that aside, the visuals are very lush and the score complements some well placed montages to give the viewer a true sense of the desired never-ending summer Charles and Sebastian so desperately dream after.

If you like British tales of class and religion, or period films, this one is not a letdown. It is nothing new, but nothing terrible either. I recommend it if this is your sort of thing, I was not disappointed, but I wasn't blown away.

The greatness of the original Brideshead Revisited was in the luxury of being able to transpose a very complicated emotional and intellectual book into words. It succeeded in this, but only just, due to superb direction, photography and script which, even in its sparseness, only just allowed the successful transition to film. The problem with anything shorter is that, if it took Mortimer so many episodes to get it right, then there are very few writers who could even get near in under 4 hours, if that. So lets stop beating about the bush. This is a sound reproduction of the calender plot but after that it is not Brideshead Revisited. Call it by another name and I will laud it. It brings in a strong homosexual element and a early sexual attraction between Charles Ryder and Miss Flyte. With that everything becomes unbalanced. Motivations change. The beauty of the original is that it hinted at ????something (a je ne sais quoi) and it was that and the ever strengthening Catholic awareness of family that made this film so fascinating. The original's masterpiece was the script supported by the cine photography. That has been lost. But taken as is, a pretty and interesting film which seems to be loosely based on an early fifties work by Waugh.