'Brideshead Revisited' revisited

For months now, Brideshead Revisited fans the world over have been atwitter over the possibility the new feature film based on Evelyn Waugh's beloved 1945 novel would NOT include an appearance by Aloysius the teddy bear.

How could the film-makers edit Aloysius out?

He's not just a stuffed animal, you cried, but a symbol, essential to Waugh's tale of lost innocence.

Well, I've seen the movie, boys and girls, and rest easy: Aloysius made the cut.

Wait a second. Aloysius the teddy bear? Doesn't ring a bell?

Good. You're cleared for admission to the movie, which caters less to the loyal constituency who know and love the book or 11-hour television adaptation than it does to folks who've never heard of either.

But first, let me bring the newbies up to speed.

Set in England during the years leading up to World War 2, Brideshead is a story of friendship, doomed love, the crumbling English aristocracy and the power of religion to heal and hurt.

All that swirls around the head of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), a young, middle-class atheist who, while a student at Oxford, becomes infatuated with the family of one of his school chums, Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw).

Sebastian is one of the great guilt-ridden characters of 20th-century English literature.

The dipsomaniacal gay scion of an aristocratic Catholic family, he marches around campus with a large stuffed bear tucked under one arm and a bottle of booze under the other.

Together, Sebastian and Charles embark on an ambiguous relationship.

Something halfway between friendship and romance, although for Sebastian it is almost certainly closer to romance.

But here's a problem.

Charles is both less antisocial and less gay than Sebastian, whose sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell), soon turns Charles' head.

Their affair soon runs afoul of Julia's domineering mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), who cannot allow her daughter to marry a non-believer, and Sebastian, who runs away to Morocco to nurse his broken heart.

That leaves Charles solo and at the mercy of Lady Marchmain, whom Thompson plays as a sort of Mummie Dearest with a stiff upper lip.

OK, now for the quibbles.

In the process of boiling down Waugh's already dense - if less than epic - novel into a feature-length film, it has become slightly . . . deformed.

Purists, however, may be most alarmed to see how the love triangle has mutated, overshadowing the book's themes of God and redemption, and how timelines have been compressed.

The problem isn't that this Brideshead doesn't uphold the integrity of the book.

For the most part, it does, in the way that a postcard from the beach, or a souvenir T-shirt, upholds the integrity of your summer vacation.

It evokes, rather than misrepresents.

- Brideshead Revisited opens in theatres around the country on Thursday.

 

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