Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited is an evocative and poignant story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence set in pre-World War II England as the privileged aristocracy fell into decline.  It tells the story of young, middle-class Charles Ryder’s involvement with the aristocratic Marchmain family over a period of 20 years, and in particular, with the Marchmain brother and sister, Sebastian and Julia.

Charles meets Sebastian, the charismatic but flawed younger son of the family, at Oxford University.  He is soon seduced both by Sebastian and his world of wealth, glamour, and outrageous behaviour.  His seduction is complete when Charles visits ‘Brideshead’, the Marchmain’s magnificent ancestral home, where he is introduced to a new family and a world entirely unlike his own middle-class upbringing in London.  Sebastian, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Charles and is determined to keep his new friend to himself.  Over a glorious summer they share all the pleasures Brideshead affords, from wine-tastings and lakeside picnics to bathing in Brideshead’s grand, sculpted fountain.  During the course of this idyll, Charles becomes infatuated with Sebastian’s beautiful younger sister, Julia.  As Charles’s emotional attachment to the entire Marchmain clan deepens, however, he finds himself and his atheism increasingly at odds with his friend Sebastian and his family’s ardent Catholic beliefs, rigidly enforced by the matriarch, Lady Marchmain. 

Charles is invited to accompany Sebastian and Julia on a trip to Venice where he meets Lord Marchmain, their spirited, hedonist father.  Marchmain has left his wife and the formality of Brideshead for the vitality of Venice and the passion of an Italian mistress, Cara (Greta Scacchi).  In the heady atmosphere of the Venetian summer, the brooding attraction between Charles and Julia ignites.  Caught up in the decadent excitement of the Carnivale, they kiss for the first time. Confused and troubled by this turn of events, Julia flees.  Charles discovers that Sebastian has witnessed this intimate moment and knows that his friendship with the youngest son of the Marchmains will never be the same.

Back in England, any thoughts of a relationship between Charles and Julia are quickly quashed by Lady Marchmain, who is well aware of the spiritual and social divide between them.  Nevertheless, Lady Marchmain invites Charles to Julia’s 21st birthday ball at Brideshead, not so much as a guest than as a companion and chaperone to Sebastian whose drinking is getting out of hand.  Charles’s initial excitement at seeing Julia again is dashed when Lady Marchmain announces the engagement of her daughter to the Canadian businessman, Rex Mottram, a match the matriarch has engineered.  Charles’s miserable evening ends abruptly when a drunk and grief-stricken Sebastian lurches into the party, bellowing his hatred for his family and for Charles for having deserted him.  Lady Marchmain casts Charles into exile from the Eden that is Brideshead.

Two years pass before Charles receives a surprise visit from Lady Marchmain. With some humility and in desperation for her son’s welfare, she implores Charles to find Sebastian and help him back onto the straight and narrow.  Locating him in Morocco, Charles begs Sebastian to come home to visit his ailing mother.  Although ill and weakened by alcohol, Sebastian has found his own peace and declines to return. Charles bids a final farewell to his friend and in time, loses touch with the Marchmain family as he establishes himself as a successful artist with an international reputation and marries a young socialite, Celia (Anna Madley).

In 1935, travelling back to England from an expedition to the jungles of Central America, Charles has a chance meeting with Julia.  Neither of them is in a happy marriage and both recognise that they remain one another’s true love.  At last, it seems that Julia, and perhaps even Brideshead, are within Charles’s reach. 

Charles and Julia return to Brideshead to negotiate the annulment of Julia’s marriage to Rex.  Julia is exasperated when the men barter for her with Charles’s paintings. Rex points out that Julia’s second marriage would never be recognised by the Catholic Church but despite this, she and Charles are poised to leave for Europe, happy together at last.  Their escape is thwarted when Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead to die.  Knowing the old man had abandoned Catholicism long ago, Charles is furious with the family’s insistence on a deathbed reconciliation between God and Lord Marchmain.  In the end, however, even Marchmain succumbs to the will of God and the power of Brideshead. 

Julia is deeply moved by her father’s death and his last-minute acceptance of the Catholic last rites. Charles realises that she will never be free of her religious upbringing.  Her feelings of sinfulness and her desire to be close to God mean that Julia will never truly be his.  Charles walks out to a lonelier future.

During World War II, Charles is billeted back at Brideshead which has been requisitioned as an army base.  As he wanders the grounds, he recalls his turbulent, passionate history with the Marchmain family and his two lost loves.  Bustling with soldiers and bursting with supplies, Brideshead begins its own transformation, swept away by a more modern, less privileged world.

Distributor: Golden Scene Company Limited

Release date: 4 Dec 2008

Category: IIA

Duration:133 mins

Cinemas:
1/ AMC Pacific Place
2/ AMC Festival walk
3/ Palace IFC
4/ Broadway Cinematheque
5/ Broadway Olympian City
6/ The Grand