Brideshead Revisited
This is the official trailer.
Feel free to call me a bad slasher, but: the essential appeal of this interpretation of Brideshead does not lie in the overt gay, and it does not lie in the breathtaking gorgeousness of the movie. It lies in the almost architectural precision with which Matthew Goode portrays the protagonist, Charles Ryder, as the most opaque narrator to hit the movie screen since... well, I can't even think of a comparison. It's the kind of opaque portrayal that tones down the main character but really brings out the autobiographical feel of the novel - know what I mean?
See, here's the thing about Matthew Goode: he is unbelievably smooth. In fact, he is so damn good at being smooth that it took me half the movie to stop trying to figure out whether his Charles Ryder is Tom Ripley or Jane Eyre. (OK, I jest about Jane Eyre... a little.) Ryder shares the basic characterization with Ripley - poor, brilliant, charming, intoxicated by his fortunate entry into the world of British aristocracy and their wealthy, wealthy lives - but unlike Ripley, he is effortlessly smooth and not at all desperate: he's just a guy who happens to be beautiful, smart, creative, socially adept, and therefore gets quickly adopted into the circle of his class superiors at college. But he just sort of... lets it happen, tolerates it all, and goes along for the fabulous ride with enough grace and honesty that you can't even accuse him of playing the poor little rich people (or leading them on). The pragmatism with which he gets "diagnosed" early on in the movie doesn't rear its ugly head until much, much later and under some pretty ambiguous circumstances, where moral judgment must account for too many shades of grey to label him as either good or bad on the spot - since he's just trying to play the same game as the wealthy for whom, it turns out, money does matter. Surprise, surprise.
(And yes, the script is incredibly rich and complex. No easy callouts, no quick judgments will work.)
And this is why the promotion for the movie sucks: the trailer puts a very special highlight on ambition, but Ryder's desire to fit into the world of Brideshead - again, unlike Ripley's - lacks precision, calculation, and aggression. If anything, he is uncertain and kind of shy about defining and expressing what he wants. Instead, he plays the role of a rather passive friend/love interest to the Flyte siblings, letting them use his presence and company for their own amusement and/or comfort. Unlike Sebastian (the gay brother) who practically chants "I want, I want" throughout the movie, our narrator barely manages to admit to himself, years later, that he wanted too much from his Brideshead experience. (This is a beautiful parallel between him and Sebastian, who falls hopelessly for Ryder even though he knows he's straight, and comes to the same sad conclusion: it wasn't anyone's fault that he ended up alone and miserable, he just wanted too much from the person he loved.) But as Ryder lives through the seduction by and banishment from Brideshead, its opulence and its religious rigor, the vulgarity of its class and the almost barbaric strictness of its faith - he ALWAYS remains the outsider.
This is the crux of the movie, the superb balance achieved in the very center of the narative's brilliant moral ambiguity: Ryders character is slowly carved out through the way he makes his choices, not by his desire to live out a fantasy of life in Brideshead by marrying Julia. He starts out poor, an artist, and an atheist. He becomes rich and successful, but he'll never be nobility and develops a rather cynical view of wealth; he creates art, but despises the consumption of it and the meanings his public keeps imposing onto his paintings; and as much as he loves Julia and intellectually comprehends the meaning of faith in her life, he cannot accept her faith just to be with her. That would be a complete and irreversible betrayal of himself, a too-high price to pay: getting Brideshead by sacrificing honesty in his relationship with the woman he loves. (Even if he does agree to a trade with her husband, a few paintings in exchange for the annulment, but that's an attempt to buy their way out of the uglier side of life among the wealthy. See moral ambiguity above.)
Here's the thing: even though Ryder mostly remains a mystery at the heart of the story, volunteering nothing, he still manages to come across as profoundly human in his Otherness. He's an observer rather than a pursuer, a witness rather than a protagonist, gliding through the narrative after his desires without ever living them out fully and realistically. Even his affair with Julia feels magical rather than real, because he believes her religious "hangups" will disappear if they just get away from her family... and doesn't realize Julia's guilt is fully internalized, a burden she would bear every day she lives with him "in sin". The father's death scene is an incredible illustration of the crucial difference between them: to an atheist, this is the moment of ultimate exclusion and of shockingly visceral comprehension that those on their knees around the death bed see love, beauty, and salvation where he sees pressure, betrayal, and vulgarity. (It's an AMAZING scene. Just... wow.)
Perhaps most importantly, the Ryder in this movie makes a great outsider without forcing us to identify with him: he's the kind that gets to keep his perspective, let us have ours, and also let us watch him realize the "inside" is not nearly as cozy as he used to think - the family that brought him so much beauty and heartache in this lifetime was made up of people who didn't fit together either, each of them be(com)ing an outsider as well. In the end, it's not about the story/social milieu/doomed romance at all: it's about the individuals' experience of their own desires in a narrative that's startlingly autonomous and minimally melodramatic. And, you know, any story that gets you to see that kind of depth in a face that pretty... well, it's good.
Bottom line: the movie is wonderfully complex, gorgeous, rich, and beautifully tempered. It has flaws, of course - gaps and cliches and omissions one would expect from a movie that tries to cram a novel into 2+ hours on screen - but these are actually forgivable. Emma Thompson is fabulous, manipulative with that grand sense of righteous entitlement that spells out "matriarch" in big bold letters without ever looking like a parody. The actors who play Sebastian and Julia are lovely: they go from otherworldly/dreamy to realistic/human with ease, from fantasy to flesh, making sure we can relate to Ryder's fascination with them both but never fall completely under the same spell.
And yeah, I'll say it again: Matthew Goode is AMAZING in the lead role. I've seen him play manipulative-smooth (and American) in The Lookout where he practically seduces Joseph Gordon-Levitt into joining his gang for a bank robbery; that's not the smooth he's playing in Brideshead, and the subtlety of qualitative AND quantitative difference is nothing short of phenomenal. Damn, he's good. (Can't wait to see what he does in The Watchmen...)
Check it out. It will be worth your while.
So... yeah. I guess I'm back from my summertime LJ hiatus. Hi, everybody! :D
Feel free to call me a bad slasher, but: the essential appeal of this interpretation of Brideshead does not lie in the overt gay, and it does not lie in the breathtaking gorgeousness of the movie. It lies in the almost architectural precision with which Matthew Goode portrays the protagonist, Charles Ryder, as the most opaque narrator to hit the movie screen since... well, I can't even think of a comparison. It's the kind of opaque portrayal that tones down the main character but really brings out the autobiographical feel of the novel - know what I mean?
See, here's the thing about Matthew Goode: he is unbelievably smooth. In fact, he is so damn good at being smooth that it took me half the movie to stop trying to figure out whether his Charles Ryder is Tom Ripley or Jane Eyre. (OK, I jest about Jane Eyre... a little.) Ryder shares the basic characterization with Ripley - poor, brilliant, charming, intoxicated by his fortunate entry into the world of British aristocracy and their wealthy, wealthy lives - but unlike Ripley, he is effortlessly smooth and not at all desperate: he's just a guy who happens to be beautiful, smart, creative, socially adept, and therefore gets quickly adopted into the circle of his class superiors at college. But he just sort of... lets it happen, tolerates it all, and goes along for the fabulous ride with enough grace and honesty that you can't even accuse him of playing the poor little rich people (or leading them on). The pragmatism with which he gets "diagnosed" early on in the movie doesn't rear its ugly head until much, much later and under some pretty ambiguous circumstances, where moral judgment must account for too many shades of grey to label him as either good or bad on the spot - since he's just trying to play the same game as the wealthy for whom, it turns out, money does matter. Surprise, surprise.
(And yes, the script is incredibly rich and complex. No easy callouts, no quick judgments will work.)
And this is why the promotion for the movie sucks: the trailer puts a very special highlight on ambition, but Ryder's desire to fit into the world of Brideshead - again, unlike Ripley's - lacks precision, calculation, and aggression. If anything, he is uncertain and kind of shy about defining and expressing what he wants. Instead, he plays the role of a rather passive friend/love interest to the Flyte siblings, letting them use his presence and company for their own amusement and/or comfort. Unlike Sebastian (the gay brother) who practically chants "I want, I want" throughout the movie, our narrator barely manages to admit to himself, years later, that he wanted too much from his Brideshead experience. (This is a beautiful parallel between him and Sebastian, who falls hopelessly for Ryder even though he knows he's straight, and comes to the same sad conclusion: it wasn't anyone's fault that he ended up alone and miserable, he just wanted too much from the person he loved.) But as Ryder lives through the seduction by and banishment from Brideshead, its opulence and its religious rigor, the vulgarity of its class and the almost barbaric strictness of its faith - he ALWAYS remains the outsider.
This is the crux of the movie, the superb balance achieved in the very center of the narative's brilliant moral ambiguity: Ryders character is slowly carved out through the way he makes his choices, not by his desire to live out a fantasy of life in Brideshead by marrying Julia. He starts out poor, an artist, and an atheist. He becomes rich and successful, but he'll never be nobility and develops a rather cynical view of wealth; he creates art, but despises the consumption of it and the meanings his public keeps imposing onto his paintings; and as much as he loves Julia and intellectually comprehends the meaning of faith in her life, he cannot accept her faith just to be with her. That would be a complete and irreversible betrayal of himself, a too-high price to pay: getting Brideshead by sacrificing honesty in his relationship with the woman he loves. (Even if he does agree to a trade with her husband, a few paintings in exchange for the annulment, but that's an attempt to buy their way out of the uglier side of life among the wealthy. See moral ambiguity above.)
Here's the thing: even though Ryder mostly remains a mystery at the heart of the story, volunteering nothing, he still manages to come across as profoundly human in his Otherness. He's an observer rather than a pursuer, a witness rather than a protagonist, gliding through the narrative after his desires without ever living them out fully and realistically. Even his affair with Julia feels magical rather than real, because he believes her religious "hangups" will disappear if they just get away from her family... and doesn't realize Julia's guilt is fully internalized, a burden she would bear every day she lives with him "in sin". The father's death scene is an incredible illustration of the crucial difference between them: to an atheist, this is the moment of ultimate exclusion and of shockingly visceral comprehension that those on their knees around the death bed see love, beauty, and salvation where he sees pressure, betrayal, and vulgarity. (It's an AMAZING scene. Just... wow.)
Perhaps most importantly, the Ryder in this movie makes a great outsider without forcing us to identify with him: he's the kind that gets to keep his perspective, let us have ours, and also let us watch him realize the "inside" is not nearly as cozy as he used to think - the family that brought him so much beauty and heartache in this lifetime was made up of people who didn't fit together either, each of them be(com)ing an outsider as well. In the end, it's not about the story/social milieu/doomed romance at all: it's about the individuals' experience of their own desires in a narrative that's startlingly autonomous and minimally melodramatic. And, you know, any story that gets you to see that kind of depth in a face that pretty... well, it's good.
Bottom line: the movie is wonderfully complex, gorgeous, rich, and beautifully tempered. It has flaws, of course - gaps and cliches and omissions one would expect from a movie that tries to cram a novel into 2+ hours on screen - but these are actually forgivable. Emma Thompson is fabulous, manipulative with that grand sense of righteous entitlement that spells out "matriarch" in big bold letters without ever looking like a parody. The actors who play Sebastian and Julia are lovely: they go from otherworldly/dreamy to realistic/human with ease, from fantasy to flesh, making sure we can relate to Ryder's fascination with them both but never fall completely under the same spell.
And yeah, I'll say it again: Matthew Goode is AMAZING in the lead role. I've seen him play manipulative-smooth (and American) in The Lookout where he practically seduces Joseph Gordon-Levitt into joining his gang for a bank robbery; that's not the smooth he's playing in Brideshead, and the subtlety of qualitative AND quantitative difference is nothing short of phenomenal. Damn, he's good. (Can't wait to see what he does in The Watchmen...)
Check it out. It will be worth your while.
So... yeah. I guess I'm back from my summertime LJ hiatus. Hi, everybody! :D