Brideshead Revisited - New Movie revisits the old book and tv series

Doug, you shouldn't have left so soon. We needed you at dinner after watching this movie to fill in some of the questions we had about class and school in England. I'll get to that later.

The title gives away a lot. We'll be revisiting Brideshead often. And the movie will visually be in and out of the shadows, blacks and whites, reflecting how we see all the characters - partially revealed partially in the dark. Sometimes I think the directors have a good laugh as people read all sorts of things into their films. But I was struck, over and over again by how people walked in and out of shadows; how only one side of a face was lit, the other dark; how the light danced - on cigarette smoke, on the shimmering walls of the canal.

When I took a photo class long ago, I remember that an ideal photo had in it some total white and total black. As you watch the clips, you'll see the cameraman does that in many (most?) scenes. I need to go back and see if that is true throughout. Even outside in sunshine, there's the black band on the white hat, or shadow masking some part of the frame.
Matthew Goode, as Charles, stood out as the student who goes to Oxford in the early 20th Century and quickly falls in with Sebastion, Lord Sebastian, the troubled, very rich young man with a suffocatingly Catholic mother and a father who's escaped her choke hold for a cheerier life in Italy leaving the children in her clutches. All the acting was good (Emma Thompson played the mother). But while Ben Whishaw's Sebastian allowed him to be dramatic in a more flamboyant way, Goode had to work within very narrow confines, his eyes and lips doing much of the acting. Or so I remember it.




My questions that beg for Doug's participation in the discussion had to do with the role he was supposed to play. Despite the fact that his mum had died when he was little, and that his father never looked at him when they spoke, which they barely did, he was incredibly comfortable with who he was. His second day at Oxford, though he wasn't from any of the proper prep schools, sitting in a room with Oxford's very out and camp gay crowd - with there being little hint of his prior gay experience - he appears totally at ease with himself and the situation and responds with complete composure to the taunts he receives.

OK, I know the book is famous and I think I saw some episodes when this was a series on tv. Maybe it's all clear in there. But while there were hints here and there that he was trying to fit in, it really isn't until the end that he tells Julia straight out how much he needed being part of Brideshead. Yes, we were told that in scenes along the way, but Goode's calm composure in every situation, seemed too cool. I would have liked to see a bit of self-doubt. The words "I wanted to fit in" weren't accompanied by an edge in his voice, a shadow (not literally, there were plenty of those) on his face. He always knew exactly what to say in dicey situations (well, these were dicey in a very upper class way, like wearing the proper shirt for the occasion, meeting Mother) with no hesitation, with the right inflection, and a hint that this was all rather easy.

Of course, he may have been that rare person who actually had that much comfort at a young age in who he was to carry it off. That would have been what made him so attractive to all around him. And the hint at the end that perhaps he was like Rex, the American, and that all this was simply calculated, was tantalizing, but I didn't see enough of this in his character to give me doubts about his intentions. I'm so naive.

I need to go back and find out which, if any, of the characters the author Evelyn Waugh saw himself as. Doug, fill me in. Or Jay, maybe you have some insights.