Direc­tor Julian Jarrold’s lav­ish period piece Brideshead Revis­ited trots the globe like a gen­teel James Bond adven­ture, vis­it­ing Lon­don, Venice, and Morocco, but espe­cially the opu­lent Cas­tle Howard. From the per­spec­tive of an igno­ra­mus that hasn’t read Eve­lyn Waugh’s 1945 novel, this com­pressed ver­sion of what I imag­ine to be a grander prose nar­ra­tive doesn’t much fit the tra­di­tional struc­ture of a feature-length movie. For instance, a major char­ac­ter dis­ap­pears halfway through, and the inter­nal con­tra­dic­tion of another’s stunted emo­tional life ver­sus his grasp­ing desires is not a very cin­e­matic subject.

Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) is a vora­ciously ambi­tious only child of a bit­ter, sar­cas­tic, wid­owed father. He leaves his emo­tion­ally sti­fling home behind to study his­tory at Oxford. His true aspi­ra­tions are to be a painter, even though the chilly athe­ist does not seem to posses the rich emo­tional life of an artist. His middle-class Lon­don fash­ions divide him from his new upper-class peers, but from his first arrival on cam­pus, he feels imme­di­ately drawn to the “sodomites.” As we learn more about Charles, we see that he does not so much share their sex­u­al­ity as he is fas­ci­nated by their out­wardly dra­matic, emo­tion­ally hon­est natures, and con­sid­er­able wealth — none of which he posesses. Curi­ously, Goode’s most recent screen appear­ance is as the sim­i­larly emo­tion­less and sex­u­ally ambigu­ous Ozy­man­dias in Watch­men (read The Dork Report review).

My loves, my hates, down even to my deep­est desires;I can no longer say whether these emo­tions are my own, or stolen from those oth­ers we des­per­ately wish to be

One among Charles’ new friends is equally hun­gry to attach him­self to him in return. The alco­holic, infan­tile Sebas­t­ian (Ben Whishaw) has more love for his teddy bear and house­keeper than for his extremely Roman Catholic mother Lady March­main (Emma Thomp­son, whose role is not much more than a cameo, despite being fea­tured front and cen­ter in the poster). Charles is awestruck by the wealth and opu­lence of Sebastian’s vast fam­ily estate Brideshead. As they pass through the chapel, the staunchly athe­ist Charles mim­ics his host and gen­u­flects. Sebas­t­ian upbraids him, for not only is he from another social class alto­gether, worse, he is not Catholic. Charles first exposes the essen­tial nature of his char­ac­ter when he replies that he was “just try­ing to fit in.”

But just as Charles’ cold home was defined by an unlov­ing patri­arch, Brideshead is blan­keted by Lady Marchmain’s oppres­sive miasma of Catholic guilt. Lord March­main (Michael Gam­bon) escaped by decamp­ing to Venice, where Catholics are a bit more lib­eral: they live their lives as they wish, and sim­ply con­fess their sins away when nec­es­sary. At first, it seems only Lord Marchmain’s mis­tress Cara (Greta Scac­chi) under­stands the sit­u­a­tion: this homo­sex­ual dal­liance is just a phase for Charles, but Sebas­t­ian is truly in love with him. We later learn that Lady March­main, whom one might assume would be blink­ered by her pious faith, is fully aware of her son’s pain. She also gives an even more astute analy­sis of what dri­ves Charles to attach him­self to the fam­ily: “You’re so des­per­ate to be liked, Charles.”

Drink­ing is not a hobby, Sebastian.

Charles is able to psy­cho­an­a­lyze him­self in the end: “did I want too much?” All his actions are dri­ven by desire: for the affec­tions of the Oxford gay clique, to reside in Brideshead, to marry Sebastian’s sis­ter Julia (Hay­ley Atwell), and to be praised by high soci­ety as a painter. But Charles is icily detached, with a notable lack of emo­tion and empa­thy. He calmly divorces his wife off­screen, in order to marry Julia and become lord of Brideshead. But as her fam­ily gives the sacra­ment of last rites to Lord March­main against his wishes, she per­ceives a mir­a­cle as he relents and reac­cepts his faith in his final moments. Her own faith is rekin­dled and she rejects Charles. In the end, his actions have ensured the final gen­er­a­tion of the fam­ily, and leave the desirous manse to no one.

Offi­cial movie site: www.bridesheadrevisited-themovie.com

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