Review of Withnail & I (1987) by Afzal S — 02 Jun 2008

Depictions of twenty something people in films tend to be sentimental and rosy-tinted, as if their youth sets them apart from life's bitter realities. And while there are many twenty somethings living it up (or at least appearing to) as in the plethora of rom coms, there are at least as many who clearly aren't, and also have the added uncertainties of single life and unclear career paths. But there has never been a film as painfully honest in this regard than Withnail & I.

Withnail, an upper class black sheep and ham in the making, and Marlowe, a tentative, out-of-his-depth young man at the back of a new generation of working class sixties actors, hopelessly flail about in the pit of their artistic ambitions. They wait endlessly for the call to work and spend their time in the pursuit of drink and drugs, and try and fail to cope with the resulting adverse but comic effects.

So intent are they on numbing the conscious parts of their brains, because their current situations are so bad, they don't even have the time for girls (and in their state they hardly even have a chance!).

But when they decide a holiday from their sixties Camden holeout (wonderfully recreated) is needed, they find themselves on a strange course which leads them to the wilds of Cumbria and an unwanted love interest in the heavy form of Withnail's sexually repressed Uncle Monty!

Withnail & I, like all of the best films, shows something more than hanging on for the odd, tentative triumph amid the general, everyday tragedy of life. The film is also about the end of the sixties social and cultural experiments and the beginning of the seventies, opportunity for some and a hangover for others.