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01-10-2008 15:20
This week sees the release of another British period piece as director Julian Jarrold, who brought us Becoming Jane, takes on Brideshead Revisited.
The story begins in1925 at Oxford, when Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) is befriended by the louche and flamboyant Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), son of Lord Marchmain, and is quickly seduced by an exciting new world of money, glamour and outrageous behaviour.
When he is invited to Brideshead the Flyte family’s magnificent ancestral home, Charles becomes infatuated with Julia (Hayley Atwell), Sebastian’s beautiful sister.
But as Charles’s emotional relationship with the Marchmain family deepens, he finds himself continually at odds with their deepest family bond, that of their overpowering Catholic faith.
Charles Ryder is of middle class standing studying at Oxford University but while serving in the British Army during the waning days of World War II, Charles is assigned to a temporary base set up on the estate of the wealthy and aristocratic Flyte family, where he strikes up a friendship with twentysomething Lord Sebastian .
Charles finds himself captivated by their world of privilege and finds himself being draw into their family while becoming infatuated with Sebastian's sister, Julia.
But he senses that his relationship with Sebastian may be deeper than just simply friendship.
Sebastian is the character that has experienced the greatest change between book and film as director Julian Jarrold made the character more explicitly gay.
Sebastian enjoys the pleasures his privileged life has afforded him, but he also senses that something is missing, and he tries to drown his frequent episodes of depression in alcohol and, unlike his family, an atheist.
But Sebastian struggles with jealousy when he sees a relationship begin to develop between Ryder and his sister Julia as he wants Ryder’s love for himself.
Sister to Sebastian Julia is the love interest of Charles Ryder. However she marries another man, a Catholic (although later it turns out that this man became Catholic to enable marrying her).
Unhappy in her marriage Julia embarks on an affair with Ryder.
A vital part of Brideshead is that of Lady Marchmain. A staunch Roman Catholic, she is the religious centre of the novel and the film, binding all the characters together and, in the case of the Marchmain children, largely informing who they are, directing their decisions both subconsciously when they were growing up and consciously as they become adults.
The film uses Lady Marchmain to subtly explore the complexities of religion and the deep hold which the family’s faith has upon the Marchmain children and the difficulties Charles faces as an atheist trying to comprehend the power of that faith.
Lord Marchmain is dying and against the religious faith that so strongly hangs over his family he has left his wife and is living with his mistress.
Brideshead revisited is released 3rd October
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