Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited

[Liam]

Originally Posted by beelzebubbles

I tried to watch the recent movie based on Brideshead Revisited and found it quite tedious...

Yes, but what did you think of Matthew's ass, though?



[And don't say: Tcha, you know what, I've seen better--]



~ L.

[beelzebubbles]

It was quite nice as was the rest of him though it could use a thin layer of fat. I don't hold with all this emaciation.

I urge all the young actors with in sound of my voice to have the occasional sandwich.

[heidiadonis]

I finally watched the 2008 movie "adaptation" of the book. Liam, I agree with you on the fact that Matthew Goode has, indeed, a beautiful body, the kind of a body that tells why Greeks made so many statues out of. He has a very pleasing yet strong-willed face, which is why, I think, he was chosen as Charles not as Sebastian.

Even though the movie did not deliver the book faithfully, it carried certain interpretations of the book. For example, agitation and sadness of emaciated Sebastian at Brideshead and in Morocco, respectively, and the strict Catholic faith, which can strip away our will and ruin us, by the deliberately exaggerated acting of Lady Marchmain.

I understand now why beelzebubbles asked us if we had any impression that Charles cared more Brideshead than any family member. That is only the movie not the book itself.

Julia did not company Charles and Sebastian to Venice. Charles crossed rather unexpectedly Julia in the ship years after his quitting Brideshead. There was never jealousy in Sebastian of Julia in his friendship with Charles. It is true that Charles was focused at his artist career and drifted away from Sebastian in his troubles.

The movie was not bad at all. I appreciated it despite some disappointments such as the absence of Sebastian's charm. I'd love him regardless.

[Isobel1407]

Thanks so much for the great book review! This is one of my favourites of all time. The love story is conveyed with perfection, and the central themes of the religious and the secular are dealt with seamlessly. The novel also provides a good illustration of the changes in British society post World War II. Against this backdrop the characters search for philosophical meaning whilst also looking for love.

Isobel
Books Quarterly

[saliotthomas]

Just gave up on The loved ones,a supposedly funny story about English poete working in a funaral home for pets in Hollywood.
I didn't even smille once half the way through.

But i gave up on plenty of good books lately.

[beelzebubbles]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Just gave up on The loved ones,a supposedly funny story about English poete working in a funaral home for pets in Hollywood.
I didn't even smille once half the way through.

But i gave up on plenty of good books lately.

That is snarky satirical Waugh, this Waugh is another breed of cat.

[heidiadonis]

I do not blame you, saliotthomas. I hardly care about satire, especially "snarky" one, or even humor in a book I am reading. I give an exception to some children books I read for fun and Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin. Tragedy has always been my preference.

[beelzebubbles]

Originally Posted by heidiadonis

Tragedy has always been my preference.

I imagine you saying this while clutching a copy of Anna Karenina to your breast on this fainting couch.



Unfortunately for me I am a comedienne. Which is probably why I am made uncomfortable by Waugh's flights of lyricism betwixt his portrayal of these eccentric people.

[heidiadonis]

Ha ha... I got your jest. I am sitting in a couch more comfortable one than the one on the picture. I do not have a copy of Anna Karenina, but I have War and Peace or Lolita or The Brothers Karamazov with me. I guess I could repeat what I said with any of these books and actually faint.

Do you like the book, despite your discomfort on lyrical parts?

[beelzebubbles]

Oh yes, I am enjoying it. I only have a chapter left. It's funny because I don't remember Julia and Charles romance from the mini-series but then the bromance between the two boys was more colorful what with Anthony Blanche providing some mad moments. And of course the naughty Aloysius. Making his attachment to that bear charming rather than annoying was one of Anthony Andrews accomplishments in the mini-series. I objected to the scene in which Charles shuns Sebastian's kiss. Uncalled for I think. No need to make Charles explicitly heterosexual. Neither the book nor the mini-series are so gauche or wrong-headed.

[beelzebubbles]

Oh that final chapter. Sheesh, Waugh gives you no quarter. I was crying at the end of it and then I cried again at this paragraph in the epilogue.

Something quite remote from what the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce, little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame--a beaten copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten copper doors of the tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burn for other soldiers , far from home, farther, in heart, from Acre and Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it anew among the old stone.

I suppose I am made uncomfortable by Waugh's lyricism because I am used to his cutting satire and I find the lyric suspicious in a satirist. I guess it is just the fear of someone laughing at naked emotions that makes the comic and the lyric an uneasy combination.