Review of Withnail & I (1987) by Torbjorn N — 21 Jan 2010

Whenever Handmade Films comes up in conversation, most people think of the company which saved Monty Pythonâ??s Life of Brian after EMI pulled out. But there is so much more to this once-great company, which produced some of the most important British cult films of the 1980s. Within the space of six years, George Harrison and his associates gave us John McKenzieâ??s visceral masterpiece The Long Good Friday, Terry Gilliamâ??s brilliantly absurd Time Bandits, and Alan Bennettâ??s wonderfully repressed A Private Function. And then there is Withnail & I, a bleak and bittersweet comedy from writer-director Bruce Robinson about acting, alcoholism, and the end of an era.

The great success of Withnail & I is that is manages to be a film about the nature of actors and acting without every descending into outright pretension. This is remarkable when we realise that the film is largely autobiographical, with â??Iâ?? being Robinson and Withnail being Vivian MacKerrell, a young actor who died of throat cancer a few years after its release. The film manages to achieve this through a very strong balance of the arty and the gritty, marrying flamboyant characters with dark circumstances and bleak, often poignant humour.

The script is a bizarre and beautiful balance of ornate theatrical jokes and street slang, silver-tongued metaphors and toilet humour. One moment Richard E. Grant â??demands to have some boozeâ?? and downs lighter fluid when none can be found; the next sees Richard Griffiths babbling on about Eton and describing roses as â??prostitutes for the beesâ??. This means that the characters and their way with words are never allowed to escape their grim realities, and hence we continue to care about them even in their most arty moments. We arenâ??t turned off, for instance, by Withnailâ??s blatant and obnoxious snobbery; we feel sorry for him throughout the film, and the closing speech (in which he recites from Hamlet) is truly brilliant.

Likewise, the film has some really simple and gritty visuals with effective camera work, which allow the story to effectively tell itself. The look of the film is very similar to A Private Function, in that they are both period pieces about individuals on the lower rungs of the social ladder. The actorsâ?? faces are dimly lit and grimy, the walls are yellowing, the rooms are musty and hidden by carefully placed shadows â?? the whole landscape has an air of decay to it which takes you into the heart of the story. Much like the tumble-down back streets in The French Connection or the coal fields in Get Carter, you feel like youâ??re really in the pubs, in the houses, among the social turmoil. You feel, in other words, like youâ??re in a world which is dying.

In many ways, Withnail & I is about the passing of an age. Monty quips that he and the boys are the last of a breed, as actors at any rate. The drug dealer gets high while explaining that the 1960s is over and that the young have â??failed to paint it blackâ??. As the film carries on both the hedonistic optimism of Withnail and the self-delusion of â??Iâ?? die very slowly; the former is left despondently in the rain, while the latter moves on to a better and more ordered life. The fact that the film is able to tackle these subjects without being either rose-tinted or overly sentimental is testament to Robinsonâ??s honesty as a writer and a filmmaker.

What is equally impressive is the level of humour sustained throughout the piece, so that it manages to be simultaneously elegiac and hilarious. There are several brilliant set-pieces, such as Withnail attempting to catch fish with a shotgun, or the scene in the tea room where he demands â??the finest wines in all humanityâ??, or indeed his deadpan antics driving the Jag back to London. But just as important, and as funny, is the comic interplay in the dialogue. The conversations between Grant and McGann range from the stupidity of Manchester to the perils of being an understudy, and they are all executed with dry, acerbic wit and panache from the performers.

Richard E. Grant gives his all in the film, putting in a tour de force performance which he has yet to top, for all his great work in The Scarlet Pimpernel and Gosford Park. Grant famously was (and is) tee-total â?? to simulate the experience of Withnail he was taken on an all-night binge by the crew, and in the lighter fluid scene he was forced to drink vinegar during the take. McGannâ??s performance is just as compelling; his reading of the graffiti in the pub toilets will simultaneously shred your nerves and make you laugh out loud. And Richard Griffiths is on very good form, to the point at which he is simultaneously creepy and endearing. His Monty represents what Withnail will most likely grow into â?? a self-pitying, repressed has-been, yearning for past glories which donâ??t really exist.

The problems with Withnail & I are unusual for such a low-budget personal work. It is slightly too long, feeling the need to introduce a lot more secondary characters than is perhaps necessary. The poacher, the farmer and the drug dealer all make for interesting comic diversions, but their extended presence is not really developed and unfortunately means that Withnail is sidelined for a lot of the middle third. There are also quite a lot of similar scenes, usually of the two eating intercut with their meetings with the locals. Theyâ??re well staged, but as more examples come along you wonder as to the cumulative effect they are having on the plot. Many of the fleeting conversations could have been inserted in any order to much the same effect, meaning the intense weekend in Montyâ??s cottage loses some of its intensity.

These quibbles aside, there is no doubt that Withnail & I remains an important cult film which is funny, poignant, meaningful and very well-executed. The central performances are great, and are complimented by solid if rough direction which more than does justice to the source. It is a shame that the careers of neither the main actors nor the director have completely flourished as a result â?? for all McGannâ??s subsequent work, including an underrated turn as Doctor Who, he has yet to top this. One hopes that Robinsonâ??s new film, The Rum Diary, will be a return to form for him. Based on the strengths of this, he deserves another hit late in his career.