Excellent modern take on Brideshead
Brideshead Revisited review
By
Electricvic from London
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18th November 2011
It was brave - or maybe foolhardy - of the filmmakers to update Evelyn Waugh's novel for the big screen with the Granada series still fresh in people's memories. And anyway the book - I haven't read it - is not rated as one of Waugh's best.
For me, the risk has paid off handsomely and having recently given up on revisiting the full 75-hour 1981 Brideshead on tape (painfully slow) I really enjoyed the film. The relationship between Charles and Julia is made central to the story instead of the 'is it or isn't it a gay relationship' between Charles and Sebastian. Charles also seems to have a bit more substance, and his atheism - clashing with the Flyte family's mostly lapsed Catholicism - is much more the fore.
The film's focus actually strips away the snobbish wallowing in a glorious past which seems to appeal to so many people (but which Waugh was surely trying to criticise and not glorify). In fact, it's a real shame this film did not do better at the box office.
