Hollywood is so often blamed for ruining the great cultural objects, that it is worth noting that a mainly British team have managed to lay waste to the latest screen adaptation of classic 1940s novel Brideshead Revisited - or so the commentators have been lining up to claim (Eyewear will see the film in the fullness of time).The irony is that Americans and Canadians (critics and audiences alike) grew up in love with the Granada TV series, which was aired on PBS. The fact that a vast audience in North America was primed and ready for a cinema version seems to have been overlooked by the cynical fire-sale crew who remade it ("everything must go") - who chucked out, apparently, the Teddy Bear, most of the Oxford stuff, and, of course, the religious subtext about grace, and Catholicism. This is like The Jewel In The Crown being remade, without "India".
It hardly makes sense for the current director (even if he is an atheist) of this lamed new version to claim to be "anti-Catholic" - and for most of those involved to have intentionally avoided the original TV version, or, indeed, the novel itself, which is famously about opulence versus austerity. This seems like a self-inflicted wound - but not, at any rate, stigmata.
One of the current tragedies in the cultural life of Britain is that, while in America, where 90% of people believe in God, cultural works can be made, open to the possibility of a divine presence, here, in the UK, far too many in the media and culture industries are militantly anti-religious - neutering their ability to sensitively and robustly engage with most of human history, and culture. Since film is also about good box office, it seems the producers bungled, in turning over such a potentially erotic-if-religiose (and hence, popular) product to a being of less than exquisite imagination.
Comments
Not sure I buy your appraisal of UK/US religious sentiment, though.
Yes, there is a vein of militant aetheism in this country, and yes they shout loudly, but I don't think they're given disproportionate coverage in the British media. And frankly, I'd take Britain's form of limp-wristed spiritual agnosticism over the horrendously intolerant right-wing Christianity present in certain US states - any day.
Genuine question: how do you think Brideshead would be remade differently in North America?
(For the record, I'm proud to be a Catholic, whatever my spiritual doubts.)
Most of the cutting and excising has to do with fitting Waugh's long and thematically subtle novel into a single feature-length film. The director has chosen to focus the film on Charles and Julia's tortured and oft-thwarted love, and this works, though certainly not as deeply and resonantly as the miniseries. But how could a two hour meditation have as much in it as a twelve-hour meditation?
What works in the new movie is:
1)it's gorgeously filmed!! The scenes in Venice are breathtaking!
2)Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw actually work as Charles and Sebastian, and I did not believe I could enjoy this story without Irons and Andrews.A scene in the new version where the two drink bottles and bottles of old wine in the Brideshead sunset is beautifully nd sensitively done.Of course the homoerotic theme is more plainly portrayed, that's to be expected these days, but not beyond the intention and spirit of the book, in my opinion.
3)the acting is wonderful; the casting is excellent. Too bad many of these amazing actors got so little screen time.
What made the 1981 series so wonderful was the beautifully long time we got to explore layers of character and theme. A single film does not have this time, so we miss the thematic depth that secondary but pivotal characters like Anthony Blanche and Cordelia Flyte brought to the longer version (they make only brief appearances in the film). We also miss the time for talk: the long conversations in Brideshead's dining and drawing rooms that made us love the place perhaps as much as Charles did and added, again, thematic depth and subtext. No reference to a key passage in one of Chesterton's Father Brown novels, for example, and I missed it.
So as a portrayal of the novel,if you insist on thinking of it while you watch the movie, the film is a bit slapdash. But if you can take it on its own terms, you'll get to see some amazing actors sink their extremely capable teeth into these characters. Not, alas, Irons and Andrews (and Gielgud and Olivier and Bloom, sigh...) but quite satisfying nonetheless.