Review Movies Cinema: Brideshead Revisited | Julian Jarrold | Evelyn Waugh | Upper Class

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 2 October 2008

Ben Whishaw as Sebastian Flyte and Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder in in Brideshead Revisited

Bride honeymoon not over

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
Directed by Julian Jarrold
Certificate PG

IT is hard to feel sorry for the lizards that made up the English upper classes in the 1930s – you can rub your hands with glee when recounting the troubles they faced.
Their place as role models in the popular imagination was usurped by American film stars, they lost their fortunes in the Depression and saw jobs for their offspring disappear as the Empire declined.
It makes the trick pulled by Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited all the more impressive. He managed to make a family of uptight, staunchly Catholic Lords of the Manor appear human.
Brideshead’s plot centres on wannabe painter Charles Ryder. His lonely life is turned upside down when he leaves the heavy atmosphere of his Edwardian home for Oxford. It is here he falls in with Sebastian Flyte. And so begins a decade-long tale of repressed love and the fall of an old order.
Waugh is a master story teller and director Julian Jarrold weaves magic to remain true to Waugh’s aims.
Add to this an impressive cast headed by Michael Gambon and Emma Thompson as Lord and Lady Marchmain. Waugh’s superb novel is faithfully recreated and holds the attention.

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