Julian Jarrold On Brideshead Revisited - page 2

03-10-2008 12:07

The two embark on a close, intense friendship that is further complicated by the introduction of Sebastian's beautiful sister Julia and his overbearing, extremely religious mother, Lady Marchmain.

Unlike the novel Sebastian's character has been made more openly gay and was one of the biggest changes made to the novel by Julian and his team.

'I think any contemporary reader now would recognise that he is gay, at the time when Waugh was writing it it had to be very veiled and it was semi-based perhaps on Waugh's autobiographical experiences at oxford where he had a homosexual relationship.

'It seemed ridiculous to pretend that it wasn't a gay relationship and I think that it is very clearly that, or very clearly that Sebastian is gay and Charles is just beguiled by the whole experience, and obviously a time when a term wasn't even in existence but the important thing is you feel the strong bond of friendship and love between these two characters.

'The novel is very influential it was our touch stone and we kept going back to it and debating it.

'There were many things that Waugh said he meant by the novel but some of the more interesting things are below the surface, or what comes out despite what he says it's about, and his writing of Sebastian and Lady Marchmain have made very interesting characters and those are the things that we wanted to explore.'

Despite two very famous and experienced names leading the cast, in the form of Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon, the roles of Charles, Sebastian and Julia were given to three up and coming British stars; Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell, all of whom have really made their name in the last twelve months.

'Well I think it was good to have fresh young faces, we are talking about character who are just coming out into life for the first time and having their first love affairs and not thinking about life too much, so it was important to have young faces there.

'And I think with Brideshead it was important that we didn't have stars that brought great baggage with them, and if they were stars they would probably be too old for the part, so it was exciting to work with these three and I hope they become big stars as a result.'

But to get the feel of the pre-World War II period and lifestyle of the aristocracy Julian took his cast to Castle Howard

'I much prefer filming on location than in a studio I like to be in real places, although they offer you constraints, they absolutely make you understand how people behave it's like getting the right period costume that makes you stand in a certain way.

'The cast going to Castle Howard and standing in these enormous halls and echoy corridors and sumptuous bedrooms I think it gave it a real sense of what it was like to be to the manor born and to be an aristocrat, and for Charles as well to come into this world and think 'gosh how beautiful i want a part of that' it made all the difference.'

'But there were constantly issues you didn't want to back the camera into a priceless statue or break some mirror that had been there for hundreds of years so everyone always got worried when they were moving light around, I think there was one minor breakage.

'The other thing was we would be filming in one wing and the tourist would be filing around the other and sometimes we would meet in the middle but generally it was fairly well choreographed.'

A strength of the film is the cinematography and Julian worked with his design team to give two distinct feeling to the film for the audience.

'I worked very closely with the director of cinematography and we wanted to, in the first half really, we wanted this beautiful beguiling image of Castle Howard that attracts Charles, and attracts the audience, into this world like a magical kingdom.

'Then in the second half we wanted to reflect the tensions and dysfunctions at the heart of the family and you get a much colder more claustrophobic and more sinister feel and that was very much reflected in the cinematography.'

After three projects that have made it onto the big screen Julian is returning to his television roots for his next project.

'I have just finished filming a dark, noirish thriller for channel 4, which is part of the Red Riding Quartet by novelist David Pearce, that's coming out in the spring and it's very different to Brideshead.'

Brideshead Revisited is released 3rd October

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw