Brideshead Revisited and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

9:34am Thursday 2nd October 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Here’s one very good reason why Evelyn Waugh’s magnum opus Brideshead Revisited has never been adapted for the big screen before.

ITV’s lavish and critically-adored 1981 mini-series, which held viewers spell-bound for 11 glorious hours, explored the book’s tortured emotions in such fine detail that a two-hour distillation of all that longing and regret has always seemed rather pointless.

Unperturbed, director Julian Jarrold and scriptwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies collaborate on this chocolate-box interpretation, which follows its predecessor’s lead by shooting on location at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Production designer Alice Normington captures the changing moods of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s against breathtaking backdrops in northern and southern England, Marrakech and Venice. Costumes, hair and make-up are impeccable, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Jess Hall, who distinguishes each period with different colour palettes and lighting. Visually, at least, this Brideshead takes the breath away. Alas, the script barely makes our hearts flutter let alone skip a beat.

Waugh’s sprawling saga of doomed love across class and religious divides begins with army officer Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) reminiscing about his turbulent past. As a shy, middle-class student at Oxford University, Charles is taken under the wing of cousin Jasper (Richard Teverson), who warns him against fraternising with lushes like Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw): “Sodomites, all of them. Stay well clear!”

Curiosity piqued, Charles accepts an invitation to join the aristocrat’s inner circle, forging an intimate bond with the fey, fragile student, who describes himself as “the family shadow”. Sebastian invites his pal to the childhood estate, Brideshead, where Charles meets the formidable Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) and Sebastian’s sister Julia (Hayley Atwell). The two young men grow close, culminating in a brief kiss, but a trip to Italy to visit Sebastian and Julia’s father, Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon), and his mistress (Greta Scacchi), sparks a betrayal that will drive apart Charles and the prodigal Flyte son forever.

The film never escapes the shadow of the television series, condensing Waugh’s text into a simplistic menage a trois, riven by Catholic guilt. Goode is too restrained as the tragically naive interloper, internalising Charles’s anguish so deeply it barely registers as the house of Marchmain crumbles to its foundations.

In contrast, Whishaw is terrific, powerfully conveying the emotional devastation as Sebastian succumbs to alcoholism and self-loathing. He tugs the heartstrings during a final meeting with Charles in Morocco, confiding sadly, “I asked too much of you. I knew it all along really. Only God can give you that kind of love”.

Thompson imposes herself upon the role of Lady Marchmain, walking a fine line between icy and resolute as her matriarch sacrifices the children at the altar of her faith. The screenwriters meanwhile sacrifice too many peripheral characters and textual subtleties to make this Brideshead truly an affair to remember.

Based on Toby Young’s memoir How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, director Robert B. Weide’s debut narrative feature of the same name charts the misadventures of a British writer who unexpectedly finds himself at the centre of New York’s social whirl. At first, the scribe refuses to churn out sycophantic puff pieces but he soon sells his soul to the media devil, becoming the mirror reflection of the very fame-hungry zombies he used to lampoon with such venom. Regrettably, screenwriter Peter Straughan files down all of the barbs in Young’s confessional, shoehorning the characters into a generic romantic comedy, replete with outlandish set-pieces.

The death of a pet Chihuahua, which chases after a ball and leaps headfirst into a closed window, is a slapstick centre-piece, bookended by projectile vomiting and a brawl at an awards ceremony. The film tries so desperately to wring one chuckle out of nothing, with a menagerie of characters who don’t possess enough style or savvy to operate convincingly in the high-powered world of Hollywood glitz.

Simon Pegg is a most dislikable anti-hero. He plays Sidney Young, snide editor of Post Modern Review, a sardonic rebuke to celebrity culture cobbled together by a ragtag staff from offices above a London kebab shop. Writing primarily for his own amusement, Sidney is stunned when a renowned magazine editor (Jeff Bridges) offers him a correspondent’s post on New York lifestyle bible Sharps.

Abandoning London for the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple, Sidney realises his finely-honed sarcasm doesn’t wash with the locals, not least department head Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston) or fellow writer Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst).

“Sidney’s our very own idiot savant, without the savant,” sneers Lawrence.

Public relations doyenne Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson) is equally unimpressed, and wards him off her client, starlet Sophie Maes (Megan Fox).

Trying to survive in the city that never sleeps, Sidney is torn between feisty Alison and beautiful-yet-dim Sophie, while attempting to woo the great and good of an industry obsessed with physical perfection.

If you want to lose friends and alienate people then buy them a ticket to Weide’s film.

Pegg grates from the very first smug grin, making Dunst’s undernourished love interest seem even more adorable by comparison.

Bridges, Huston and company are wasted in thankless supporting roles, while Fox purrs and pouts in a succession of slinky outfits.

When Alison angrily defends her colleague - “Sidney Young has more going for him than anybody in this place!” - we’re tempted to give the film its first and only laugh: of derision.

It’s preposterous that an intelligent and talented woman like Alison could fall for such an irredeemable buffoon, who mocks his father (Bill Paterson): “You thought Brad Pitt was a cave in Yorkshire!”

We thought How To Lose Friends & Alienate People was a comedy. Who’s the bigger fool?