Word: marchmains
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...largely) frustrated longings of both the homo- and heterosexual varieties. Even if you never read the book, you will recall from the 11-part TV version of the 1980s how the infinitely sad young men and women of the story are bedeviled by the conservative Catholicism of the Marchmain family tradition, while we passionately wish for them to shake off its shackles and follow their various sexual impulses toward happiness...
...story is really quite simple: A poor but honorable lad named Charles Ryder (played in the new movie by Matthew Goode) goes up to Oxford where he meets Sebastian Marchmain (Ben Whishaw) when the latter leans in his window and throws up on his floor. Soon enough they're dining on plover's eggs and mooning over one another. Sebastian introduces Charles to his family - in this film living in a statelier home than any Masterpiece Theater ever dreamed of - which includes his sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell), and his sternly religious mother (Emma Thompson, splendidly playing as far from...
...hair? Was it really such a good idea to get rid of George III and Lord North? Given the uninflected worship of money that marks the 1980s, it is no wonder that the spectacle of privilege enjoying its own toilette has become America's hottest cultural ticket. Thus Lord Marchmain of Brideshead becomes the Blake Carrington of the American upper middle classes...
Propelled by piety, Lady Marchmam (Bloom) tries to mold everyone into goodness. Therein lies much of the family tragedy. Lord Marchmain (Olivier), his love turned to hatred, has gone into self-imposed exile in Venice; Sebastian becomes a doomed and hopeless alcoholic. "Poor Mummy," he says, when he later learns of her death. "She was a true femme fatale. She killed with a touch." Sebastian's beautiful sister Julia (Quick) meantime marries a crass politician, and Charles, who has become a painter, enters into an unhappy marriage of his own. Ten years later, the two of them meet again...
...beginning, Charles' enchantment with Sebastian and the Marchmains' way of life is infectious, and the first several hours of Brideshead are a glorious feast-even better, no doubt, than those served up in Sebastian's rooms at Christ Church college. The acting is scrupulous. Gielgud's scenes with Irons in the Ryder dining room in London are small comic masterpieces of timing and nuance. Olivier's grand scenes come at the end, when Lord Marchmain comes home to die at Brideshead...