Review of Brideshead Revisited (2008) by Gary B — 26 May 2013

I came to this with some trepidation, thinking that no film could do justice in only two hours what the 1981 TV Series took 12 hours over. I was wrong.

Brideshead Revisited (2008) is a beautifully filmed and well acted screen treatment of the novel. I think it helps that they have re-used Castle Howard as Brideshead and that Matthew Goode (as Charles Ryder) is such a ringer for the young Jeremy Irons. Once you get past Ben Whishaw's hair NOT being fair (which takes a few minutes), then he plays a rather excellent version of Sebastian Flyte. The Charles-Sebastian-Julia love triangle is portrayed rather well, although here Charles' affections move from Sebastian to Sebastian's beautiful but (strangely) more forbidden sister rather faster, because the (relatively) short screen time forces some concatenation of the plot. Emma Thompson makes a very good Lady Marchmaine, whose over-commitment to her religion is the nexus of most of the psyochological scars in all her children.