So it was a Saturday night, and we went to see Brideshead Revisited en masse. In the words of the email invitation Tamara and I had sent out (this part mostly written by her):
Why? Because it's Brideshead - because we were "in search of love in those days, and ... went full of curiosity" - because of the magnificent Emma Thompson - because it's billed as "a story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence", which isn't quite how we remember it and we ache to know more - because of lots of pretty young things we haven't seen in much else but rather like the look of - because of the clothes and houses and accents and scenery - because it will be utterly infuriating if anyone sees it before we do. (Also, we thought it would be fun to go see this one with a gang of others. Tamara is in favour of going in costume and Howard has made indefinite promises to appear in tweed.)
Watching it, I was struck more than once by the realisation of how many layers there are to my relationship with Waugh's novel; much of the back story is here and here (and, in a different way, here), but given that I've still only read it once, and was left more with an impression of the book's effect than any real sense of its details at that, perhaps it's not surprising that so many layers have built up around 'Brideshead Revisited' in my mind...my idea of it has been able to develop without being constrained overly much by the minutiae and particulars of the thing itself.
I wonder, too, how that relates to my reaction to the film; it pretty much hit the spot as far as its emotional register went - like the book (or at least my abiding impressions of the book), it's nostalgic, wistful (indeed, sad), and strangely charmed, while also possessing a certain intensity of vision which is oddly harmonious with the general haze covering its proceedings - but left me conflicted in several of its other aspects (the way in which it deals with Catholicism, for example)...though I wonder to what extent I'd simply glossed over those other aspects in my reading/recollection of the novel.
Though a bit obvious in places, overall it's a well-made film, helped by some suitable-looking leads (though of the minor characters, Blanche, for one, was way different from how I'd always imagined) and a willingness to remain reasonably faithful to the spirit of the source material, if not always to its letter (I felt that it worked fine on its own terms - it made sense, albeit with more of a focus on the romantic melodrama element than I remember from Waugh's version). It left me very ambivalent for reasons which I haven't quite nailed down, but may (as I sketched out before) be somehow related to the fuzziness of my sense of the book (and to its significance to me); still, it got me a bit.
(w/ Tamara and, in approximate order of arrival, Buffy (a friend of TV's), Kelly, Rob & Laura, Kathleen, Nicolette, Jaani, Sid & Maansi, David & Justine, trang & Arthur, Bec and Kim - making it a complete disconnect from the "Endgame" troupe of the night before, incidentally)
