It has been said that Evelyn Waugh was not content with his novel Bridesehead Revisited, rejecting its tone as pretentious. I do not know if he regarded the eleven hour TV adaptation of the work as justification, but I felt both were triumphs with the eleven hour TV series capturing the nuisances, the complexity and intensity of the characters. Recently I caught a repeat of the first two episodes which centre on the life of Charles Ryder, an upper middle class young man, and Sebastian Flyte, the second son of an Aristocratic Catholic family as they meet at Oxford University, and whose beautiful and spectacular country home and estate is Brideshead. I knew that a film version was about to be released and when I saw that this was today I had only one thought which was to get to the cinema theatre in time for the afternoon showing.
The first surprise was that audience comprised three sets of older women and one other male also within my generation. I feared that the experience was going to by spoiled by three housewives catching on the latest gossip. I know this because they spoke in loud voices throughout the adverts and then the trailers but then kept quiet throughout a film. Glory be.
The book and the TV adaptations are long and for me it was difficult to work out the core story, especially with the focus on Oxford and then Venice, two of the most beautiful cities within my experience/. Having rushed off I had not prepared myself for a film, a fifth the length of the TV series and for different music, music which had added to and branded the film the inter war era of the upper classes it represented.
I have to admit what the Director has achieved is a beautiful but coherent and serious film about the nature and impact of Catholicism upon the psyche in a way which should please the Pope and his Vatican Therefore the film will mean less to non Catholics unless they also have become embroiled with Catholicism. Charles Ryder is not just a non catholic but an open atheist and that he is consistent in his rejection of the notion of any God, let alone a Christian God is the one aspect of his personality to his credit, and this serves as a means of exposing the strengths and the weaknesses of the faith. I say this because the film, (I do not know if it is in the book or TV adaptation, the wealthy American husband of the eldest daughter, Julia, and female love of the life of Charles, tells him that had been willing to convert to Catholicism like he, he would have been allowed to marry Julia.
Because of the emphasis on Catholicism, the film spike to me directly and I was not distracted by the views of Oxford where I lived for five years and I found myself making mental notes for the book about my quest for a core identity and the relationship with my birth and foster mothers. I had hoped to have written the greater part by now, although it is fitting that this moment arises during the first anniversary of the death and funeral services for my mother and within three months of ten years of finding out who my father was, and was not, and a further two months before my seventieth birthday.
In the TV series Jeremy Irons plays Charles Ryder and has a likeable and intense quiet inner certainty and presence, arising from his comfortable and well educated background and drive to become a painter. He is comfortable within the society of after World War One Oxford and immediately at home at Brideshead, to an extent this Lady Marchmain sees him immediately as a potentially who could help protect Sebastian, and invites him to join them in the Chapel for prayers after an evening meal, in the hope that despite his stated atheism, he is convertible. While Irons, and the book character is not completely convincing as an artist painter, in contrast to Michael Yorke, who plays the bisexual artist writer in a version of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin based books, the musical Cabaret, the actor who plats Charles in this film version is hugely disappointing.
Matthew Goode is not able to communicate the kind of personality that would seduce all the members of the aristocratic family within moments of first meeting, together with the audience, or able to make the audience feel sympathy for someone who stripped of all the flim flan is a social adventurer trying to establish the family he never possessed as a child and young man, who is full of judgements and moralising about the behaviour of others, while least critical of his own behaviour as be betrays the relationships of everyone he encounters. This is harsh and he is given the opportunity once to show something of why Charles takes to him when his wish to become a painter is ridiculed at the first lunch party in college when one says you are an artist or you are not, and argues that photography has replaced the need for painters, Charles shows his self belief arguing that the painter reflects what one feels about a subject, and such is the level of those surrounding Sebastian that no one points out that this is also the what can make a photograph art when it sets out to express the totality of a moment rather than the objectivity and detailed memory of a scene.
By second and only other criticism of the film is that by concentrating on the key events and characters, the film almost bypasses the wealth of other characters who help to create a symphony about the upper classes between wars whereas what we are left with is an important and profound piece of chamber music about the impact of Catholicism on a family and with whom they interact.
In the TV series and book you also feel that the father is an interesting man and would like to know more about him and why he has such a distant, almost detached relationship with his only child. In the film the father and his social status is downgraded to an extent that he is unlikely to have sent a son to Oxford without academic ability and pushed him off to study art and its history. I and I suspect that others were not convinced that Charles from a lower middle class home in Paddington would feel at home among the Aristocrats.
The film is rescued by the other actors. I am most impressed by Ben Wishaw which I hope is considered as an Oscar/Bafta supporting actor nomination fro his performance as Sebastian who tries to lose his maternally inspired Catholic conscience through drink and debauchery, and who then finds redemption in caring for someone in a worse condition than himself, until his own ill health takes him to a hospital run by a religious order in North Africa. Charles fails in his mission at the request of Lady Marchmain to bring Sebastian home to make peace with each other and their God before she dies. She is comforted that at least he is with men of faith. Sebastian has gone to pieces when he discovers that Charles has switched his intentions to Lady Julia, his sister, when they journey to Venice at the request of their father who is living in sin with an Italian Catholic in a mini palace overlooking the grand canal. The Venice adventure has however a greater significance as Lord Marchmain half admits that he has escaped his wife Catholicism and attitude towards sex and his mistress explains that the Mediterranean Catholics are different from the English as they enjoy life, and by implication sex, and then go to confession on a regular basis to repent their sins. It is no accident that the last two Popes, one Polish and the other Germanic, are men who adhere to the puritanical form of the religion.
The brilliant Emma Thompson also gives a major performance which could get her an best actress nomination. She takes her faith and her family seriously and one immediately thinks of Cheri Blair the wife of Tony Blair who has converted to her faith, and Ruth Kelly who has not only left the Cabinet but is to leave Parliament. Charles frustrated that Lady Marchmain prevents Julia marrying him describes her actions as poisoning the lives of Julia and Sebastian and fails to understand that she was right in banning him from further contact with the family when while attempting to save both his soul and his body Charles gives him the cash to go out and get drunk on the day when the eldest sister is twenty one and her engagement is announced.
In real life that should have been that. Charles who denounces all contemporary art as bosh at one point finds fame and wealth as an artist through the help of a wealthy and influential young admirer who he marries but several years later he encounters Lady Julia on an ocean liner returning to England from New York. They have sex but Charles being Charles cannot then carry one with the life he has made and persuades Julia to live with him as if helping to destroy one member of the family is not enough. His interest in being able to visit and possible live at Brideshead is too strong and he successfully gets Julia's husband to agree to an annulment fro the price of two of his fashionable counterparty art paintings. He appears to have no understanding of the impact on Julia of living in sin as a Catholic until the elder son who is about to marry a Catholic widow with family says his future wife will be unable to receive her while she remains in such a state. Julia who believes the still birth of her child within the marriage was God's punishment for her religious disobedience agrees to leave with him despite knowing that she is disinheriting herself, but them she is given the first of two signs. He father is rushed home to die as they set off. Charles sensing that the combined pressure of the eldest son, the devout younger sister and the Catholic Mistress will affect his future, attempts to persuade Lord Marchmain to reject the visit of a priest to perform the last rites and at first is successfully, but as Lord Marchmain, played notable by Michael Gambon dies he makes the sign of the cross upon himself, restoring Julia to her faith and home from which Charles departs again, apparently not to return. The TV adaptation and book opens with Charles finding himself moved to unknown new base during World War Two prior to the Normandy landings and in the morning gets of his tent in the grounds of an estate to be told they are at Brideshead. He learns that the title inheriting brother has been killed and that the Lady of the House is away on war work. Charles re visit the Chapel signing himself with Holy water, the first indication of man who knows he made the wrong choices in the past. Theer is a holy light flickering and for a moment in goes to extinguish it, but desists. This is not just the actions of an atheist in wartime creating a reserve position or responding to an earlier statement that Lady Marchmain had infected every stone and blade of grass, but the actions of man on the verge of finding faith in something other than, we are born, we live and we die, as expressed by his batman.
Some will see the film as a bi sexual love triangle without the usual torrid sex scenes or as a commentary on the decline of the British Aristocratic way of life. Most will find the work a travesty of the wit in the writing of Waugh and a poor attempt given what many regard as thee greatest drama series ever made for British Television. I cannot see those who go to the cinema on weekend evenings queuing up to see the film and then going off to buy the book. For me he film did great justice to the intentions of the author, Evelyn Waugh who converted to Catholicism and who described the work as the operation of divine grace on a diverse but closely connected group of characters. Amen to that.
Amen also to the Democratic and Republicans who put their duty to their country and all its fellow citizens before their political future and personal ideologies. I hope they will experience the operation of divine grace as the money they have voted to the President and his administration is put to effect lasting good use. They did on a two to one basis and restored some of their standing in the rest of the world, if not among many of their electorate.
Amen to Gordon Brown for tacking an extraordinary decision to ask Peter Mandelson his arch enemy for over a decade, but one time close political friends because he supported the candidature of Tony Blair for the Labour Leadership over that of the Prime Minister., to return to the Cabinet as Trade Minister with a peerage to the House of Lords on the grounds he was the best person available after the resignation of the present, Mandelson is a hated figure within sections of the Labour party and the media, who was forced to leave the Cabinet twice because of allegations of misuse of position although he was cleared of the latter and is reported to have been a very successful Trade Commissioner for Britain and for the European Community during the past four years. The argument of the Prime Minister is that at this important moment it is essential to have the best available people working together regardless of what has gone .., especially between them. No one was more surprised than Mandelson and most commentators regard the development as a stroke of desperation rather than of genius. However most also hope that it works such is the reality we now find ourselves in. So amen to that too.
The first surprise was that audience comprised three sets of older women and one other male also within my generation. I feared that the experience was going to by spoiled by three housewives catching on the latest gossip. I know this because they spoke in loud voices throughout the adverts and then the trailers but then kept quiet throughout a film. Glory be.
The book and the TV adaptations are long and for me it was difficult to work out the core story, especially with the focus on Oxford and then Venice, two of the most beautiful cities within my experience/. Having rushed off I had not prepared myself for a film, a fifth the length of the TV series and for different music, music which had added to and branded the film the inter war era of the upper classes it represented.
I have to admit what the Director has achieved is a beautiful but coherent and serious film about the nature and impact of Catholicism upon the psyche in a way which should please the Pope and his Vatican Therefore the film will mean less to non Catholics unless they also have become embroiled with Catholicism. Charles Ryder is not just a non catholic but an open atheist and that he is consistent in his rejection of the notion of any God, let alone a Christian God is the one aspect of his personality to his credit, and this serves as a means of exposing the strengths and the weaknesses of the faith. I say this because the film, (I do not know if it is in the book or TV adaptation, the wealthy American husband of the eldest daughter, Julia, and female love of the life of Charles, tells him that had been willing to convert to Catholicism like he, he would have been allowed to marry Julia.
Because of the emphasis on Catholicism, the film spike to me directly and I was not distracted by the views of Oxford where I lived for five years and I found myself making mental notes for the book about my quest for a core identity and the relationship with my birth and foster mothers. I had hoped to have written the greater part by now, although it is fitting that this moment arises during the first anniversary of the death and funeral services for my mother and within three months of ten years of finding out who my father was, and was not, and a further two months before my seventieth birthday.
In the TV series Jeremy Irons plays Charles Ryder and has a likeable and intense quiet inner certainty and presence, arising from his comfortable and well educated background and drive to become a painter. He is comfortable within the society of after World War One Oxford and immediately at home at Brideshead, to an extent this Lady Marchmain sees him immediately as a potentially who could help protect Sebastian, and invites him to join them in the Chapel for prayers after an evening meal, in the hope that despite his stated atheism, he is convertible. While Irons, and the book character is not completely convincing as an artist painter, in contrast to Michael Yorke, who plays the bisexual artist writer in a version of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin based books, the musical Cabaret, the actor who plats Charles in this film version is hugely disappointing.
Matthew Goode is not able to communicate the kind of personality that would seduce all the members of the aristocratic family within moments of first meeting, together with the audience, or able to make the audience feel sympathy for someone who stripped of all the flim flan is a social adventurer trying to establish the family he never possessed as a child and young man, who is full of judgements and moralising about the behaviour of others, while least critical of his own behaviour as be betrays the relationships of everyone he encounters. This is harsh and he is given the opportunity once to show something of why Charles takes to him when his wish to become a painter is ridiculed at the first lunch party in college when one says you are an artist or you are not, and argues that photography has replaced the need for painters, Charles shows his self belief arguing that the painter reflects what one feels about a subject, and such is the level of those surrounding Sebastian that no one points out that this is also the what can make a photograph art when it sets out to express the totality of a moment rather than the objectivity and detailed memory of a scene.
By second and only other criticism of the film is that by concentrating on the key events and characters, the film almost bypasses the wealth of other characters who help to create a symphony about the upper classes between wars whereas what we are left with is an important and profound piece of chamber music about the impact of Catholicism on a family and with whom they interact.
In the TV series and book you also feel that the father is an interesting man and would like to know more about him and why he has such a distant, almost detached relationship with his only child. In the film the father and his social status is downgraded to an extent that he is unlikely to have sent a son to Oxford without academic ability and pushed him off to study art and its history. I and I suspect that others were not convinced that Charles from a lower middle class home in Paddington would feel at home among the Aristocrats.
The film is rescued by the other actors. I am most impressed by Ben Wishaw which I hope is considered as an Oscar/Bafta supporting actor nomination fro his performance as Sebastian who tries to lose his maternally inspired Catholic conscience through drink and debauchery, and who then finds redemption in caring for someone in a worse condition than himself, until his own ill health takes him to a hospital run by a religious order in North Africa. Charles fails in his mission at the request of Lady Marchmain to bring Sebastian home to make peace with each other and their God before she dies. She is comforted that at least he is with men of faith. Sebastian has gone to pieces when he discovers that Charles has switched his intentions to Lady Julia, his sister, when they journey to Venice at the request of their father who is living in sin with an Italian Catholic in a mini palace overlooking the grand canal. The Venice adventure has however a greater significance as Lord Marchmain half admits that he has escaped his wife Catholicism and attitude towards sex and his mistress explains that the Mediterranean Catholics are different from the English as they enjoy life, and by implication sex, and then go to confession on a regular basis to repent their sins. It is no accident that the last two Popes, one Polish and the other Germanic, are men who adhere to the puritanical form of the religion.
The brilliant Emma Thompson also gives a major performance which could get her an best actress nomination. She takes her faith and her family seriously and one immediately thinks of Cheri Blair the wife of Tony Blair who has converted to her faith, and Ruth Kelly who has not only left the Cabinet but is to leave Parliament. Charles frustrated that Lady Marchmain prevents Julia marrying him describes her actions as poisoning the lives of Julia and Sebastian and fails to understand that she was right in banning him from further contact with the family when while attempting to save both his soul and his body Charles gives him the cash to go out and get drunk on the day when the eldest sister is twenty one and her engagement is announced.
In real life that should have been that. Charles who denounces all contemporary art as bosh at one point finds fame and wealth as an artist through the help of a wealthy and influential young admirer who he marries but several years later he encounters Lady Julia on an ocean liner returning to England from New York. They have sex but Charles being Charles cannot then carry one with the life he has made and persuades Julia to live with him as if helping to destroy one member of the family is not enough. His interest in being able to visit and possible live at Brideshead is too strong and he successfully gets Julia's husband to agree to an annulment fro the price of two of his fashionable counterparty art paintings. He appears to have no understanding of the impact on Julia of living in sin as a Catholic until the elder son who is about to marry a Catholic widow with family says his future wife will be unable to receive her while she remains in such a state. Julia who believes the still birth of her child within the marriage was God's punishment for her religious disobedience agrees to leave with him despite knowing that she is disinheriting herself, but them she is given the first of two signs. He father is rushed home to die as they set off. Charles sensing that the combined pressure of the eldest son, the devout younger sister and the Catholic Mistress will affect his future, attempts to persuade Lord Marchmain to reject the visit of a priest to perform the last rites and at first is successfully, but as Lord Marchmain, played notable by Michael Gambon dies he makes the sign of the cross upon himself, restoring Julia to her faith and home from which Charles departs again, apparently not to return. The TV adaptation and book opens with Charles finding himself moved to unknown new base during World War Two prior to the Normandy landings and in the morning gets of his tent in the grounds of an estate to be told they are at Brideshead. He learns that the title inheriting brother has been killed and that the Lady of the House is away on war work. Charles re visit the Chapel signing himself with Holy water, the first indication of man who knows he made the wrong choices in the past. Theer is a holy light flickering and for a moment in goes to extinguish it, but desists. This is not just the actions of an atheist in wartime creating a reserve position or responding to an earlier statement that Lady Marchmain had infected every stone and blade of grass, but the actions of man on the verge of finding faith in something other than, we are born, we live and we die, as expressed by his batman.
Some will see the film as a bi sexual love triangle without the usual torrid sex scenes or as a commentary on the decline of the British Aristocratic way of life. Most will find the work a travesty of the wit in the writing of Waugh and a poor attempt given what many regard as thee greatest drama series ever made for British Television. I cannot see those who go to the cinema on weekend evenings queuing up to see the film and then going off to buy the book. For me he film did great justice to the intentions of the author, Evelyn Waugh who converted to Catholicism and who described the work as the operation of divine grace on a diverse but closely connected group of characters. Amen to that.
Amen also to the Democratic and Republicans who put their duty to their country and all its fellow citizens before their political future and personal ideologies. I hope they will experience the operation of divine grace as the money they have voted to the President and his administration is put to effect lasting good use. They did on a two to one basis and restored some of their standing in the rest of the world, if not among many of their electorate.
Amen to Gordon Brown for tacking an extraordinary decision to ask Peter Mandelson his arch enemy for over a decade, but one time close political friends because he supported the candidature of Tony Blair for the Labour Leadership over that of the Prime Minister., to return to the Cabinet as Trade Minister with a peerage to the House of Lords on the grounds he was the best person available after the resignation of the present, Mandelson is a hated figure within sections of the Labour party and the media, who was forced to leave the Cabinet twice because of allegations of misuse of position although he was cleared of the latter and is reported to have been a very successful Trade Commissioner for Britain and for the European Community during the past four years. The argument of the Prime Minister is that at this important moment it is essential to have the best available people working together regardless of what has gone .., especially between them. No one was more surprised than Mandelson and most commentators regard the development as a stroke of desperation rather than of genius. However most also hope that it works such is the reality we now find ourselves in. So amen to that too.
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