The same sort of simplifying/shallowing treatment of characters (and their moral character) that marred several of the 2007/2008 Jane Austen adaptations also mars this version of Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian Flyte in the book, and the 1980s miniseries, is charming, witty, and possessed of a certain spirit and response to life, as well as needy, but here he is just needy -- without any special qualities that would motivate someone to try to fulfill his needs. This isn't due to the shorter amount of screen-time available in a movie vs. a miniseries, because we get longer-than-needed scenes of Sebastian and Charles Ryder drinking and cavorting, time that could have been spent showing Sebastian being charming and imaginative.
Charles Ryder, in the book and the miniseries, is a man who isn't just a lower-middle-class fellow suddenly introduced to the upper-class; he is a man without a real emotional soul, who knows it and seeks to replace it by soaking-it-up from Sebastian. This tension between Sebastian and Charles makes the interaction between the two young men in the book and miniseries interesting and intriguing.
Here, Sebastian is attracted to Charles Ryder because Charles has a goal in life -- to paint -- and Sebastian has no idea of what to do with his own life. Sebastian's unhappiness is said to be due to his oppressive mother, yet we never see her oppress him, except for trying to get him to stop drinking, so basically we have a gay man frustrated by convention and family trying to seduce a heterosexual man. Sebastian gets Charles to pay attention to him by bringing Charles to Brideshead, sensing that Charles' real attraction is to the building, the art, the grounds. But Charles is really smitten with the beautiful and intriguing sister, Julia Flyte. The predictable happens, Sebastian is devastated: end of a friendship that never really was a friendship at all. None of this is as interesting, insightful, or thought-provoking about human nature as are the conflicts in the book and the miniseries.
A key change in the portrayal of Charles is the kind of art he does. In the book and miniseries, his success comes in paintings of great houses and buildings -- stonework, hard structures, man-made things -- not emotional subjects. In this film he gains fame painting jungle scenes, has spent two years in the South American jungles -- the lack of civilization being the essence of passion. The script could have developed the idea that Charles chose the jungle precisely because he was seeking to infuse emotion into the gap that is his own emotionless soul, but since here he has a reasonably emotional soul, this idea can't be developed.
Julia and her mother are the most interesting characters. First, the mother's very strong and strict version of Catholicism is presented as the problem that drove away her husband (father of Sebastian and Julia) and ruined her children's' lives, yet in this portrayal it is clear that she has not hypocritically chosen this form of religion as a means of imposing power on others, but that she genuinely believes the doctrines and principles are true and vital to life. Thus she is no villain. In fact, she deeply loves her son, and is really the only character in the film who strongly loves another person; everyone else is pretty much using the people they think they love, in order to fill certain emotional needs within themselves.
Second, as becomes clear at the end, Julia has imbibed the core doctrines of her mother's faith (but not the unforgiving strictness) and, as she experiences her father's death, has found them deeply comforting and essential to the core of her being. (Might the mother's death some years earlier, which is not shown in the film, had a similar effect on Julia?)
Julia is by far the most complex and interesting character -- and is wonderfully performed here -- because she genuinely feels the tension between these old religious feelings, and the modern world. As a great beauty who is also rich, and not very closely supervised, she has every freedom to forget religion and family and indulge herself; yet it is clear that she is hardly tempted to do so. It is only when Charles Ryder sees this in her, at the very end of the film, that he gets an inkling that the human character can have a lot more depth and complexity than he has previously imagined it could have.
One scene that particularly bothered me (spoiler coming) for being implausible is aboard an ocean liner, where Charles (with his wife) has taken a salon to display his paintings (a wine- and-cheese art reception, basically), and a large group of wealthy art patrons are there, many interested in buying. Charles sees his old love, Julia, apparently fleeing the salon upon discovering that the artist is Charles, and he leaves the reception, follows Julia who leads him to her stateroom, where they make love and stay into the very late hours. I could accept that he might abandon his own reception, had only his dealer and not his wife been there -- but the wife was there. We have not been given any reason to think that the wife deserves to be abandoned, or that she might welcome being abandoned. Surely she would come looking for him, and would be very hurt by his disappearance. For Charles to abandon her, and for Julia to go along with his abandoning her, not only was very bad behavior reflecting on both of them, it was also totally implausible. The screenwriter could easily have managed it that Charles' wife was not at the reception (sick in her cabin perhaps, or not on the ship at all), or that Charles would quickly arrange a second rendezvous with Julia, then go back to the reception, and then carry-out the second clandestine meeting.
Charles Ryder, in the book and the miniseries, is a man who isn't just a lower-middle-class fellow suddenly introduced to the upper-class; he is a man without a real emotional soul, who knows it and seeks to replace it by soaking-it-up from Sebastian. This tension between Sebastian and Charles makes the interaction between the two young men in the book and miniseries interesting and intriguing.
Here, Sebastian is attracted to Charles Ryder because Charles has a goal in life -- to paint -- and Sebastian has no idea of what to do with his own life. Sebastian's unhappiness is said to be due to his oppressive mother, yet we never see her oppress him, except for trying to get him to stop drinking, so basically we have a gay man frustrated by convention and family trying to seduce a heterosexual man. Sebastian gets Charles to pay attention to him by bringing Charles to Brideshead, sensing that Charles' real attraction is to the building, the art, the grounds. But Charles is really smitten with the beautiful and intriguing sister, Julia Flyte. The predictable happens, Sebastian is devastated: end of a friendship that never really was a friendship at all. None of this is as interesting, insightful, or thought-provoking about human nature as are the conflicts in the book and the miniseries.
A key change in the portrayal of Charles is the kind of art he does. In the book and miniseries, his success comes in paintings of great houses and buildings -- stonework, hard structures, man-made things -- not emotional subjects. In this film he gains fame painting jungle scenes, has spent two years in the South American jungles -- the lack of civilization being the essence of passion. The script could have developed the idea that Charles chose the jungle precisely because he was seeking to infuse emotion into the gap that is his own emotionless soul, but since here he has a reasonably emotional soul, this idea can't be developed.
Julia and her mother are the most interesting characters. First, the mother's very strong and strict version of Catholicism is presented as the problem that drove away her husband (father of Sebastian and Julia) and ruined her children's' lives, yet in this portrayal it is clear that she has not hypocritically chosen this form of religion as a means of imposing power on others, but that she genuinely believes the doctrines and principles are true and vital to life. Thus she is no villain. In fact, she deeply loves her son, and is really the only character in the film who strongly loves another person; everyone else is pretty much using the people they think they love, in order to fill certain emotional needs within themselves.
Second, as becomes clear at the end, Julia has imbibed the core doctrines of her mother's faith (but not the unforgiving strictness) and, as she experiences her father's death, has found them deeply comforting and essential to the core of her being. (Might the mother's death some years earlier, which is not shown in the film, had a similar effect on Julia?)
Julia is by far the most complex and interesting character -- and is wonderfully performed here -- because she genuinely feels the tension between these old religious feelings, and the modern world. As a great beauty who is also rich, and not very closely supervised, she has every freedom to forget religion and family and indulge herself; yet it is clear that she is hardly tempted to do so. It is only when Charles Ryder sees this in her, at the very end of the film, that he gets an inkling that the human character can have a lot more depth and complexity than he has previously imagined it could have.
One scene that particularly bothered me (spoiler coming) for being implausible is aboard an ocean liner, where Charles (with his wife) has taken a salon to display his paintings (a wine- and-cheese art reception, basically), and a large group of wealthy art patrons are there, many interested in buying. Charles sees his old love, Julia, apparently fleeing the salon upon discovering that the artist is Charles, and he leaves the reception, follows Julia who leads him to her stateroom, where they make love and stay into the very late hours. I could accept that he might abandon his own reception, had only his dealer and not his wife been there -- but the wife was there. We have not been given any reason to think that the wife deserves to be abandoned, or that she might welcome being abandoned. Surely she would come looking for him, and would be very hurt by his disappearance. For Charles to abandon her, and for Julia to go along with his abandoning her, not only was very bad behavior reflecting on both of them, it was also totally implausible. The screenwriter could easily have managed it that Charles' wife was not at the reception (sick in her cabin perhaps, or not on the ship at all), or that Charles would quickly arrange a second rendezvous with Julia, then go back to the reception, and then carry-out the second clandestine meeting.