Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (July 11, 2008)

BRIDESHEAD RENOVATED
A few weeks ago I caught a screening of a film that many gay men (and those who love them) have a particular interest in: director Julian Jarrold's feature adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Let me get it out of the way and say that I have never read the novel, nor have I ever seen the 1981 BBC miniseries adaptation starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, which many view to be a "definitive" adaptation. (You only need to do an Internet search for "Brideshead fan video" to see how loyal of a following it has.)

I was actually surprised to learn that the novel had never been made into a feature film before. And though I am not generally a fan of gauzy period remembrance films stuffed with pompous schoolboys and starched matrons (likely caused by being forcibly taken to Howard's End at age 16), I was curious to see what all the fuss was about in this case.

Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode

For those not familiar with the story, here's the basic premise: Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), a young man of common birth, meets flamboyant and self-destructive aristocrat Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) while at Oxford, and the two become fast friends. Sebastian is clearly gay and the whole school knows it (when we first see him, drunk and posing in a gondola while another showboating dandy spouts sonnets or something at him, Charles' cousin remarks, "Sodomites, all of them.").

Ben Whishaw

Sebastian takes Charles to his family's home, the gargantuan Brideshead, and Charles eventually meets Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) and Sebastian's sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell). Marchmain is a staunch Catholic, and thinks that her children are both going to hell ... in Sebastian's case, it's clearly because he's gay.

Emma Thompson as Lady Marmalade Marchmain

Over the course of several years the relationship between Charles and Sebastian is tested, and eventually falls apart, and Charles becomes involved with Julia. The entire film is framed as a wartime memory as Charles is stationed in a unit using an abandoned Brideshead as shelter, so you can guess that things didn't go entirely well for any of the relationships.

Goode, Hayley Atwell, and Whishaw

I'll have a full review of the film up closer to the release date in August, but I just wanted to mention here that by all accounts this is the most explicitly "gay" Brideshead to date. Although the novel hints at Sebastian's sexuality and makes mention of another gay relationship he has later in life, it is never truly explicit that his relationship with Charles is anything but friendship. In this version, which has a refreshingly modern feel to it throughout, the filmmakers opted to pull Sebastian out of the closet completely and added a kiss between Sebastian and Charles and a clear awareness on the parts of the other characters that Sebastian is gay.

Given that the overarching themes are guilt, class, and love (in that order), the decision to call a spade a spade and not pussyfoot around Sebastian's interest in Charles (and Charles's potential interest back) works. I went in expecting a musty film full of longing glances and unspoken desires, and what I found was a very mature, and unfortunately still very relevant story about the tolls that religious fundamentalism and family pressure can take on gay people.

Are folks excited to see this one? Again, purists might not cotton to the compressed story and more modern telling ... is this the Brideshead you wanted to revisit?

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