Review of Brideshead Revisited (2008) by Christine B — 19 Dec 2009

As I haven't seen the television series or read Evelyn Waugh's novel, I had no preconceived notions about this movie. It's a period film, and I enjoy them. The costumes, the English countryside, Venice and Morocco in the 1920s...it's all beautiful to look at. Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Emma Thompson gave stand-out performances, but this just wasn't what I'd expected in terms of plot and/or character development. For a drama, it didn't have enough emotional build-up to the "conflict" that arose and the only characters that showed any emotion whatsoever were Whishaw's Sebastian and Thompson's religiously repressed matriach of the Flyte family. It would have been interesting to have had some more background information on Charles Ryder, as well as Sebastian and Julia Flyte.

Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle hits the nail on the head:

"What's missing from Goode's performance and from the film as whole is the layer upon layer of accumulated motive -- the gradual evolution of a man's complex desires and even-more-complicated fears.".