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'Brideshead' revisited, and reworked

PROVIDED

Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) and Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) ruminate on the delights of indolence.

Ah, the glorious sight of the privileged class enjoying its privileges, to purloin a line from "The Philadelphia Story."

Evelyn Waugh, no great fan of the "middling and lower orders" of society, would have loved the tableau were it not for the ways in which "Brideshead Revisited," the adaptation, fiddles with his 1945 novel.

Just as Waugh soft-peddled the religious themes of his book to win readers in a secular age, so too does director Julian Jarrold ("Becoming Jane") play it close to the vest — almost, but not quite, turning the film into a contemporary swipe at Catholicism — as embodied by a flawed aristocratic family. Not what Waugh intended.

Screenwriters Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock narrow the focus to dwell on the relationships between the narrator, aspiring artist and (later) war-time military officer Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), and three members of the patrician Flyte family: matriarch Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson); her alcoholic younger son and Ryder's Oxford classmate, Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw); and Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia (Hayley Atwell). The pivot point is the love affair between Ryder and Julia, doomed by bad timing and the destructive power of guilt.

Ryder's entree to the rarefied realm of Brideshead is through Sebastian, a fragile fellow cowed by his controlling mother, a bloodless woman whose inflexible faith already has driven husband Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon) into the arms of a mistress (Greta Scacchi) in the warmth and gaiety of Venice. Sebastian, who has a growing crush on Ryder, invites him to his family's palatial estate, with the appropriate warnings. Though protective of Sebastian, with whom he has spent much time drinking and carousing, Ryder soon has eyes for no one but Julia.

Julia's family is Catholic, but only first generation: Lord Marchmain is an Anglican, but an avowed nonbeliever. Ryder, himself an atheist, observes Lady Marchmain's manipulations of her family with mounting distaste, but is so enamored of Julia and of Brideshead itself — it is difficult to say which he covets more — that he maintains a low profile: frank but not judgmental.

The movie opens years later, with Ryder, now married and a successful artist, encountering Julia on board a cruise ship. He is more than willing to divorce his wife on the spot. Julia, also wed, feels the same. But fate, or rather, Catholicism, intervenes. "Brideshead" closes still later, with Ryder, billeted at Brideshead as a British army officer, musing on the past.

Waugh has been quoted as saying he designed his book to center on the "operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters."

"Grace" is not exactly what Jarrold has in mind. A convert to Catholicism, Waugh made it the most significant theme of his novel. Unlike many other novels of the time, which treated faith with derision, "Brideshead Revisited" slyly turned the table on Ryder and put his secular values under the microscope.

The film, by contrast, devotes a portion of its length to holding unquestioning religious faith to account. The "deeper humanity" of Waugh's Catholicism is regarded somewhat differently in the film.

Most telling is the sidestepping of Ryder's apparent conversion, which occurs at the end of the book, when Brideshead is being employed as a military headquarters 19 years after the main action of the story. What a less "romantic" and more clear-eyed Ryder embraces in the end of the film is not faith, per se, but a ma-ture respect for others' beliefs.

Standing in for Brideshead is the sprawling Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. And cinematographer Jess Hall makes the most of it. His lensing is none too shabby in Oxford or Venice, either. The work of production designer Alice Normington and set decorator Caroline Smith is so impressive that it sometimes threatens to render the actors, determinedly underplaying their roles, save for Thompson and Whishaw, into inert figures. Hall's close-ups help rectify the problem.

A few of the novel's scenes depicting Ryder with his father (Patrick Malahide) are retained. They are useful as buffers, though not terribly revealing, and the whole film seems more concerned with not romanticizing the end of Britain's gilded age. Yet it will be hard for the film and its largely unknown stars to compete with the celebrated 1981 BBC miniseries (1982 on PBS) featuring such worthies as Sir Laurence Olivier, Jeremy Irons, Sir John Gielgud, Claire Bloom and Anthony Andrews.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.