Has anyone else seen the new Brideshead Revisited movie? I saw it yesterday afternoon in Bethesda and wanted to post about it when I got home, but well… you know. Technical difficulties.
I understand that some compression of the story is required to get it all into a 2-hour film, but there were changes made that I really didn’t like: Charles falls in love with Julia much earlier than he should, and all the subletly is removed from Lady Marchmain’s character as she loads up her children with religious guilt. All the problems I had especially with the middle part of the movie stem from these two points.
Thinking it over since yesterday, I’ve begun to believe that the people who made this film were working on the idea that their audience prefers the Charles/Julia romance to the Charles/Sebastian one, since that’s what they emphasized. The homoerotic component of the first part was pretty well watered down. I don’t know anyone who enjoys this story as written (or who likes the 1980 miniseries) who feels that way, but if you’re out there, let me know. Did you like the changes they made here?
There are some nice little character scenes for Patrick Malahide as Charles’s indifferent father, but most of the other funny and obnoxious characters in Waugh’s story appear all-too briefly: Anthony Blanche, Boy Mulcaster, Bridey, and Rex Mottram (it looked like Rex had suffered a terrible revision at first, but he redeems himself in a later scene).