I revisited Brideshead again last week—rereading the book after 25 years—because something about the newest film didn't sit right.
There’s also the 1981 version with Jeremy Irons, the sumputuous mini-series that clocks in at 11 hours. Why remake a perfectly fine wheel? Well, after my marathon reread, I’m even more curious.
I actually like the new 2008 version, primarily because of the performances. They’re terrific! But the two-hour format distorts the storyline and the work’s ultimate meaning.
The biggest problem is the timing of Julia and Charles’s love affair. In the book, the two don’t fall in love until they meet onboard the ship—10 years after they first met at Brideshead. The new film has them fall in love early on—at Brideshead. It’s a serious misreading because it leads to the premise that Sebastian’s unrequited love for Charles is what sucks him into a self-destructive vortex. His decline is far more complicated—and goes to the heart of the book.
The story appears, on the surface at least, to be critical of religion, certainly Catholicism. But the book’s chapter titles provide a real tip-off: “Et In Arcadia Ego” and “The Twitch Upon the Thread.” The novel has to do with the operation of divine grace in the world:
an invisible line which is long enough to let [ the unrepentant ] wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.
Willful disobedience gets both Charles and Sebastian thrown out of Arcadia—the paradise / Eden that was Brideshead during the summer of 1923. Only after suffering and disillusionment do the two feel the “twitch upon the thread”—even Charles does at the novel’s end, though it’s unclear whether he’s actually reeled in.
For Book Clubs
Why not revisit Brideshead by reading Waugh...then seeing the 2008 film version? Or for real die-hards watch the 11-hour 1981 version! Choose a weekend—and pack a sleeping bag and pillow! Invite me, too.