Brideshead Revisited (film)
Encyclopedia
Brideshead Revisited is a 2008 British drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Julian Jarrold
Julian Jarrold
Julian Edward Peter Jarrold, born 1960 in Norwich, is a BAFTA Award-nominated English film and television director.He is a member of the family which founded Jarrolds of Norwich in 1823 and was educated in Norfolk at Gresham's School, Holt...

. The screenplay by Jeremy Brock
Jeremy Brock
Jeremy Brock is an English actor, producer, writer, fisher and director whose works include the screenplays Mrs. Brown, Driving Lessons, Last King of Scotland, and Charlotte Gray....

 and Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies (writer)
Andrew Wynford Davies is a British author and screenwriter. He was made a Fellow of BAFTA in 2002.-Education and early career:...

 is based on the 1945 novel of the same name
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...

 by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

, which previously had been adapted in 1981 as an eleven-episode television serial
Brideshead Revisited (TV serial)
Brideshead Revisited is a 1981 British television serial produced by Granada Television for broadcast by the ITV network. The teleplay is based on Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited...

.

Plot

Although he aspires to be an artist, middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

 Charles Ryder is studying history at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, where he befriends wealthy Lord Sebastian Flyte, a flamboyant homosexual and alcoholic. Sebastian's family, the noble Marchmains, strongly disapprove of both proclivities. When Sebastian takes him home to visit his nanny, Charles is enthralled by the grandeur of the Marchmain family estate, known as Brideshead, and he is entranced by its residents, including the devout Lady Marchmain and her other children, Sebastian's elder brother Bridey and his younger sisters Julia and Cordelia.

When Lord Marchmain invites Sebastian and Julia to visit him and his mistress Cara in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, Lady Marchmain encourages Charles to accompany them in the hope he can be a positive influence on her son. Increasingly interested in Julia, Charles surreptitiously kisses her in a dark alley, unaware Sebastian is watching from the opposite side of the canal. Jealous of his attention to his sibling, Sebastian ends their friendship. On their return to England, Lady Marchmain makes it clear Charles cannot marry her daughter since he professes to be an atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

.

Sebastian's allowance is rescinded by his mother, who is concerned about his increasing alcoholism. During a visit to Brideshead, Ryder gives Sebastian money, which he uses to purchase alcohol. When he arrives drunk and improperly dressed at a ball celebrating Julia's engagement to Canadian Rex Mottram, Lady Marchmain blames Charles and tells him he no longer is welcome at Brideshead.

Sebastian flees to Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 where, at the request of the now terminally ill Lady Marchmain, Charles finds him hospitalised. His plan to bring him home is disrupted when the doctor warns him Sebastian is too ill to travel.

Years later, Charles - now married and a successful painter - reunites with Julia on an ocean liner en route to England from New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. They realize they are still in love and decide to leave their respective spouses and live together in Italy.

Charles returns to Brideshead and persuades Rex to step aside so he and Julia can be together. Rex agrees to the proposal in exchange for two of Charles' paintings, an arrangement that shocks and angers Julia, who feels like bartered goods. Without warning, a dying Lord Marchmain and Cara arrive at Brideshead so he can spend his final days in his former home. On his deathbed Lord Marchmain, hitherto an atheist, regains his faith and dies a reconciled Catholic. Deeply affected by her father's transformation, Julia decides she cannot relinquish her faith to marry Charles, and the two part.

Several years later, during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Charles - now a disillusioned army captain - finds himself once again at Brideshead, which has been requisitioned by the army for a military base. A corporal tells him Julia is serving in the reserves and her eldest brother was killed during The Blitz
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

. In the movie's final scene, Charles visits the family chapel, where he finds a single lit candle. He dips his hand in holy water and is about to snuff out the candle between his fingers, but he changes his mind and leaves the flame burning.

Production

Actors Paul Bettany
Paul Bettany
Paul Bettany is an English actor. He has appeared in a wide variety of films, including A Knight's Tale, A Beautiful Mind, and The Da Vinci Code...

, Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...

, and Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Lynn Connelly is an American film actress, who began her career as a child model. She appeared in magazine, newspaper and television advertising, before making her motion picture debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America...

 were signed for the lead roles by original director David Yates
David Yates
David Yates is an English filmmaker who rose to mainstream prominence directing the final four films in the Harry Potter film series. He helmed the series' fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth installments, all of which became an instant blockbuster success and made him the most commercially...

 for Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent Pictures was the specialty division of film studio Warner Bros. Entertainment. Established in August 2003, its first release was 2004's Before Sunset...

 in 2004. However, constant budget issues stalled the film's production and Yates left the project to helm the fifth film
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a 2007 fantasy film directed by David Yates and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the fifth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Michael Goldenberg and produced by David Heyman and David Barron...

 in the Harry Potter series
Harry Potter (film series)
The Harry Potter film series is a British-American film series based on the Harry Potter novels by the British author J. K. Rowling...

. This led to the roles being recast by directorial replacement Julian Jarrold.

Just as it did for the earlier television adaptation of Waugh's novel, Castle Howard
Castle Howard
Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...

 in North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan or shire county located in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and a ceremonial county primarily in that region but partly in North East England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972 it covers an area of , making it the largest...

 serves as the setting for Brideshead. In The World of Brideshead, a bonus feature on the DVD release of the film, Simon Howard reveals his family was eager to welcome film crews to the estate once again. Given it became a major tourist attraction after the television serial aired, they hoped the feature film would renew interest in the property.
Filming took place at Castle Howard during the summer of 2007, and many extras were employed from the local population in and around York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

.

Sebastian's sexual orientation and the full nature of his relationship with Charles were ambiguous in Waugh's novel and the television serial. In The World of Brideshead, screenwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies reveal they intentionally changed things since they felt contemporary audiences were far less likely to be shocked by such revelations than Waugh's 1945 readers or early 1980s television viewers may have been.

The ending of the film was also altered from that of the novel. In the film, Charles leaves the family chapel at Brideshead seemingly unchanged in his atheist/agnostic leanings, although he decides not to snuff out the candle that is burning. The novel ends with Charles entering the chapel and kneeling down to pray using "ancient and newly learned words," thus implying he has recently converted to Catholicism.

Cast

  • Emma Thompson
    Emma Thompson
    Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...

     as Teresa Flyte, Marchioness of Marchmain (Lady Marchmain)
  • Matthew Goode
    Matthew Goode
    Matthew William Goode is an English actor. His notable films have included Match Point, Watchmen, Brideshead Revisited, Leap Year, Imagine Me and You and A Single Man.-Early life:...

     as Charles Ryder
  • Ben Whishaw
    Ben Whishaw
    Benjamin John "Ben" Whishaw is an English actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Whishaw is perhaps best known for his breakthrough role as Hamlet, and his role as the lead character in Tom Tykwer's film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.-Early life:Whishaw was born and raised in...

     as Sebastian Flyte
  • Hayley Atwell as Julia Flyte
  • Michael Gambon
    Michael Gambon
    Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...

     as Alexander Flyte, Marquess of Marchmain (Lord Marchmain)
  • Greta Scacchi
    Greta Scacchi
    Greta Scacchi is an Italian-Australian actor.-Early life:Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer...

     as Cara
  • Patrick Malahide
    Patrick Malahide
    Patrick Malahide is a British actor, who has played many major film and television roles.-Personal life:Malahide, real name Patrick Gerald Duggan, was born in Reading, Berkshire, the son of Irish immigrants, a cook mother and a school secretary father...

     as Mr. Ryder
  • Felicity Jones
    Felicity Jones
    Felicity Jones is an English actress from Birmingham. She is best known to television audiences for her role as the school bully Ethel Hallow in the first series of The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College...

     as Cordelia Flyte
  • Jonathan Cake as Rex Mottram
  • Joseph Beattie
    Joseph Beattie
    Joseph Beattie is an English actor, known for portraying Malachi in the second season of Hex and Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park.-Background:...

     as Anthony Blanche
  • James Bradshaw
    James Bradshaw (actor)
    James Bradshaw, born 20 March 1976 in Stamford, Lincolnshire in England, is a British actor best known for playing Gordon Grimley in the popular Granada TV series The Grimleys, which ran for three series from 1999...

     as Mr. Samgrass

Critical reception

Comparing the film to the earlier television adaptation, A.O. Scott of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

called it "necessarily shorter and less faithful to Waugh's book, and also, for what it's worth, more cinematic. It is also tedious, confused and banal." He blamed director Jarrold and screenwriters Davies and Brock "for finding so little new or interesting to say . . . and for systematically stripping Waugh's novel of its telling nuances and provocative ideas." He concluded, "The long experience of English Catholics as a religious minority, the subtle gradations of class in the British university system, the crazy quilt of sexual norms and taboos governing the lives of young adults: all of this is what makes Brideshead Revisited live and breathe as a novel. None of it registers with any force in this lazy, complacent film, which takes the novel's name in vain."

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

observed, "While elegantly mounted and well acted, the movie is not the equal of the TV production, in part because so much material had to be compressed into such a shorter time. It is also not the equal of the recent film Atonement
Atonement (film)
Atonement is a 2007 British romantic suspense war film directed by Joe Wright. It is a film adaptation of the 2001 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan. The film stars James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, and Saoirse Ronan. It was produced by Working Title Films and filmed throughout the summer of 2006...

, which in an oblique way touches on similar issues. But it is a good, sound example of the British period
Period piece
-Setting:In the performing arts, a period piece is a work set in a particular era. This informal term covers all countries, all periods and all genres...

 drama; mid-range Merchant-Ivory
Merchant Ivory Productions
Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. Their films were for the most part produced by the former, directed by the latter, and scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, with the noted exception of a few films. The films were often...

, you could say."

Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

said, "The film's strengths are in Waugh's story and not so much in the particular spin of these filmmakers. Their decision to turn up the volume on the homosexual undertones between Sebastian and Charles feels like an unimaginative nod to our modern times . . . In Brideshead, Jarrold seems too often to consciously be making an in-quotation-marks classy picture, much like last year's Atonement, in which the costumes and setting are just so, but the human drama gets lost amid the pictorial pleasantries. That the film is neither a true triumph nor a total disaster makes it somewhat difficult to justify revisiting Brideshead, apart from the hope it will inspire someone somewhere to pick up the book."

David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

called it "a very noble movie, which makes it interesting at times, but not often enough . . . What Jarrold has done right is to hire Andrew Davies to work with Jeremy Brock on the adaptation. There's no one better at dusting off English classics for the wide and small screens than Davies. He and Brock have done a competent job of culling just the right plot elements from Waugh's book and assembling them into a serviceable story. Whether you want to stick it out, however, is another matter entirely . . . Jarrold and his writers are more than respectful of the original source material, but compressing it all into two hours and change doesn't make for a terribly enjoyable film . . . Davies and Brock perform miracles in making this somewhat workable, but the ultimate impossibility of their task shows at the end."

David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...

 of Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

suggested, "Think of Jarrold's briskly paced, stylish abridgment as a fine introduction to Waugh's marvelously melancholy elegy. It brings these unforgettable characters to life again, and if it sends people back to the novel, and back to the classic TV series . . . all the better. There's room for more than one Brideshead in this far less glamorous day and age."

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

graded the film B and commented, "Brideshead Revisited is opulent and watchable, yet except for Thompson's acting, it's missing something — a grander, more ambivalent vision of the England it depicts dying out. In the series, we looked at that palatial fortress of Brideshead manor and thought: Here, in one house, is a fading empire. In the movie, it's just sublime real estate."

Dennis Harvey of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

called the film "finely wrought" and added, "Purists may blanch at the screenplay's changes to the source material's narrative fine points, but its spirit survives intact . . . Goode provides a fine center of gravity as the middle-class tourist in heady but toxic upper-class realms. Thompson superbly etches a complex, eventually tragic portrait in her relatively few scenes."

Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

rated the film three out of five stars and called it "flawed and uneven." He added, "In trying to shoehorn Waugh's novel into a two-hour movie, the film-makers have left characters underdeveloped while skipping over plot points and condensing material that surely requires greater exposition. Boldly – and perhaps rashly – they have almost entirely dispensed with voiceover
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...

 narration. Anyone expecting an equivalent to Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the...

' evocative reading of Waugh's prose will be disappointed . . . On the credit side, this Brideshead boasts a handful of very strong performances . . . Emma Thompson makes a formidable Lady Marchmain and Michael Gambon is dependable as ever as Lord Marchmain but this Brideshead is slow to build momentum. At first, it is hard to engage emotionally in a story that leaps around in time and skirts over what should be key events, but the film grows progressively stronger and more moving."

Box office

The film opened on thirty-three screens in the US on July 25, 2008 and grossed $332,000 on its opening weekend, ranking twenty-first at the box office. It eventually earned $6,432,256 in the US and $6,772,035 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $13,204,291.

DVD release

The film was released on DVD in anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...

 format, with subtitles in English for the hearing impaired
Hearing impairment
-Definition:Deafness is the inability for the ear to interpret certain or all frequencies of sound.-Environmental Situations:Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other ear defections...

 and Spanish, on 13 January 2009. Bonus features include commentary by director Julian Jarrold, producer Kevin Loader, and screenwriter Jeremy Brock, deleted scenes, and The World of Brideshead, featuring interviews with cast and crew members.

Nominations

  • Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
    Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
    The Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture is one of the Satellite Awards presented annually by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :Best Supporting Actress – Drama*1996: Courtney Love - The People vs...

     (Emma Thompson)
  • Satellite Award for Best Cinematography
    Satellite Award for Best Cinematography
    The Satellite Award for Best Cinematography is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :...

     (Jess Hall)
  • Satellite Award for Best Costume Design
    Satellite Award for Best Costume Design
    The Satellite Award for Best Costume Design is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- Winners and nominees :The following listing is based on the web postings of the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :...

     (Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh)
  • Satellite Award for Best Art Direction and Production Design
    Satellite Award for Best Art Direction and Production Design
    The Satellite Award for Best Art Direction is one the annual awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :Best Art Direction:*1996: Romeo + Juliet**The English Patient**Evita**Hamlet...

     (Alice Normington)
  • British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress
    British Independent Film Awards 2008
    The 11th British Independent Film Awards, held on 30 November 2008 at the Old Billingsgate Market in London, honoured the best British independent films of 2008.-Best British Independent Film:* Slumdog Millionaire* Hunger* In Bruges...

     (Thompson)
  • GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film in Wide Release
    GLAAD Media Awards
    The GLAAD Media Award is an accolade bestowed by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to recognize and honor various branches of the media for their outstanding representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives...

  • London Film Critics' Circle Award for Best British Supporting Actress of the Year (Thompson)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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