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Now, it has been several years since I read Brideshead Revisited but I am fairly certain that this eleven-part mini-series simply took the novel and filmed it scene for scene. If anything’s been changed it was probably fairly subtle, same could be said if anything was left out. It feels as if Evelyn Waugh’s great novel has made the jump from page to screen fully formed and intact.
Which is astonishing considered the troubled history the production had to endure. Originally it began filming towards the late 70s, but various strikes, production delays, casting problems (Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews switched roles), and a change of directors mid-way through meant that the series wasn’t released until 1981. But the whole thing is so stylish, smooth and practically perfect in every way that you wouldn’t even be aware of the troubled birth.
It seems almost silly to try and summarize Brideshead as it encompasses so much, but in general is about one man who meets a family, becomes infatuated and then disenfranchised with them and slowly moves towards Catholicism. In-between are two love affairs, various allegiances and fights, descents into alcoholism and estrangement, and always the slow pounding in the background is the progress of time and the destruction of the vast family manors and titles of Old Britain making way for the New Britain. Oh, and WWI and WWII factor into the story as well. It is epic in scope and emotionally devastating in how it levels these actions within the narrative.
The mini-series does a great job of translating the conflicted and complicated verbal exchanges to the screen. Fights rarely go above a polite, clipped tone, yet so much is hidden within the gentries way to speaking to each other. This coded language carries over into the two central romantic entanglements of the story – Charles and Sebastian in the beginning, and Charles and Julia towards the end. Sebastian and Julia are also brother and sister, in the novel they look quite a bit like each other and one of the few flaws in the series is the casting choice for Julia, but on to that in a moment.
You see, there remains a great debate about the exact nature of the relationship between Charles and Sebastian – were they something beyond close friends? Are we all too filthy-minded to think that maybe you can be that close to someone and not have it dip into sex? Personally, I think that they had a romantic relationship, but I don’t think it went as far as sex. It’s clear that Sebastian is a homosexual and much of his decline into self-hatred and alcoholism is caused by his religion, family and society destroying his ideal and making him feel dirty and guilty. Charles seems enamored with him at first because he represents a carefree lifestyle of bourgeoisie decadence and getting hammered at noon. He is old money yet not snobbish, very charismatic and charming, yet stunted and doomed from the start. Charles as a single child from a lower class is obviously looking for “love,” but there are many forms and variations of love to find.
Although his later relationship with Julia is all sorts of strange once you factor in that she looks like the female version of his long-lost best friend, and he only seems to take a romantic interest in her years after his relationship with Sebastian has fallen apart. I don’t really think that these two characters loved each other, it always felt like they were empty and searching for something to fill the void in their lives that Sebastian had left and chose each other to accomplish that goal.
I’ve had a similar problem with the late-in-life conversion of Charles to Catholicism. He has spent a vast majority of the book denouncing religion and being skeptical of whole enterprise. Yet, nearly 20 years after first meeting the Flyte’s and encountering Brideshead, he returns as a soldier in WWII and prays in their broken cathedral. I understand that Waugh wanted to explain Roman Catholic ideology in a secular novel, but he crafted a family that exhibited the worst of the privileged class and systematically broke them apart. In the end they each find solace in faith, but their solace is shrouded in motivations and actions that are highly questionable.
Lady Marchmain, superbly played with the right combination of domineering venomousness and posh sophistication by Claire Bloom, is basically the villainess of the piece in many ways. Manipulating and dominating her children with her religious beliefs and making complacent in her spying on Sebastian deeds. Lady Marchmain truly believes that her actions are justifiable and right for her children, even as they tiptoe towards zealotry and madness in making sure they have a fear and sense of forbidden fruit about things like sex and a drink. It’s not hard to see why Sebastian falls into addiction and self-destruction, Julia into a loveless marriage and eventually tries to find some identity with the church, that Lord Brideshead (her eldest son) who lives by the rules his mother has enforced and ends up being cold and distant. The only one who turns out relatively well is Coredellia, the youngest, who never felt conflict over her beliefs and in the end goes out and does charitable work for the world.
This jaundiced view of Catholicism is suddenly made into an apologia by having the main character have a last minute conversion. It didn’t work in the novel and it doesn’t work in the series, but redemption does play a large role in the narrative and that does work. It’s clear that Waugh was still working out his religious ideals when writing Brideshead and that fractured thought-process has its figure prints all over any adaptation.
But lets go back to what works beautifully – pretty much everything else. With the exception of Diana Quick as Julia, every part is perfectly cast. Jeremy Irons does a great job in giving some life to Charles, who is essentially a blank cipher for us to maneuver through the narrative with. But the real standouts are Anthony Andrews as the doomed Sebastian, Sir Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain, John Geiguld as Charles’ father, and Nikolas Grace as the fey bitchily hilarious Anthony Blanche. The only reason Quick fails to live up to the rest of the cast is because she comes across as too mannered in any of her emotional scenes and looks nothing like Andrews.
It could be argued that Brideshead moves as a deliberately slow pace, but the lyricism is important as we watch the decay of this world give birth to the modern world. And with scenery as lovely as this who can complain about a few scenes where the characters stare longingly out into the distance or at each other? It’s beautiful to behold and get yourself lost in. And Geoffrey Burgon’s score only heightens the beauty and emotions on display, adding to the luster of an already lustrous production.
