I have wanted to see the ITV version of Brideshead Revisited for a while but never got round to putting it on my rental queues. I've never read the book either, so I approached this new film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel with no prior knowledge or expectations. The story is basically how Charles Ryder (played by Matthew Goode) befriends Sebastian Flyte (Ben Wishaw) at University and is welcomed to the family home (Brideshead) by Sebastian's staunchly Catholic mother (Emma Thompson) and sister (Hayley Atwell).
Overall the acting is pretty decent, Wishaw is the only weak link as his campness is overly mannered and his later drunken moodyness only elicits sombre faces from him - he's not an expressive actor at all and he doesn't do well here. He goes from being obviously "giving a performance" to actively not and neither serves his character well. Thankfully he's alone in that respect. Thompson is somewhat of a show-stealer as the devoutly Catholic, domineering mother - she injects a lot of class into the proceedings and adds layers to her character. Atwell is a very strange actress, after doing so well in ITV's production of Mansfield Park she now seems rather unsuited to period pieces (although it could simply be that she's better at spikier characters and classical pieces don't necessarily lend themselves to that). She does a more than competent job but one feels quite a bit more could have been done with this role. Goode impresses on the whole and is nicely restrained but like Atwell (albeit to a lesser degree) this role when knocked out of the park could be phenomenal but he remains in the good-to-very good region.
The direction by Julian Jarrold is probably where this film falls down the most, there are occasional bursts of quick editing or unusual camerawork and the story is not told in a consistent manner. Added to that the overall tone of the piece doesn't flow, at times there are lovely melancholic moments but they tend to surge up, grab your attention, then dissipate when it should be the overwhelming feel of the piece. The relationships aren't really fleshed out (maybe this is where the 11 hours down to 2 comes in) but the emotional resonance and poignancy is firmly with Ryder's relationship with Julia (Atwell) rather than Sebastian which weakens the balance of the story. Equally given the nature of Ryder's ambition which becomes a very big theme the longer the film goes, it wasn't drawn or developed well in the opening half of the film and that means you have characters at the end talking about things that weren't satisfactorily shown earlier on.
All that said, this is a very interesting film. The acting in the main is good (even moreso when Wishaw departs the screen) and individual moments are enchanting. The opening is probably the most emblematic of this, it's a moment where we see Ryder half-see Julia at a party, follows her then they "meet", before cutting to a title card with "10 years earlier" on it. When we come back to that moment later we cut out of it and go to the result of that meeting, when having that meeting in its entirity in the natural flow of linear-storytelling would have in this case been much more powerful. Instead when we come to it in context we are taken out of that moment and only given glimpses of what drew you in at the beginning of the film.
The initial reaction to all of this is that I wish the people who had the rights had gone out and got the person most suited to direct this material (Wong Kar-Wai would have been a seemingly impossible, but perfect fit for this story) instead of thinking "Oh yes, let's give it to the guy who did Becoming Jane, he's done period drama". It's equally saddening to learn that a different director was initially going to make the film with Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly and Jude Law in place - barring Wishaw I liked the cast here but those three would surely have done more with these characters. In the end we are left with a quite good film, which is extremely interesting, in spite of the director's best efforts to muddy the waters. If you like period dramas this will be very watchable, if not this will do nothing but reaffirm your opinion on the genre. For me, it just makes me want to revisit Brideshead in the form of the Jeremy Irons version and see what this story should, or could be.