Brideshead Revisited (2008)

N/A

I cannot think of another screen adaptation that treats its source with similar indifference, almost contempt.

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08/24/08

2/4

This is a beautiful production that doesn't succeed due to a major casting blunder and how the story switches focus in the final act.

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08/23/08

4.5/5

This is that rare film version of a book that captures the essence of the work, while at the same time bringing its own point of view to the table.

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08/13/08

3.5/4

It is all very civilized with people retaining their manners even as they verbally shred an individual's dignity or remind them of their station in the social order.

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08/10/08

2/5

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08/07/08

7.5/10

Whishaw's Sebastian is a creature not completely of this earth. Watching the matriarchal and religious pressures weigh on his thin shoulders is almost too much to bear.

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08/02/08

N/A

Boiled down to a manageable 2 1/4 hours, the story becomes uneven and the thematic development lopsided.

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08/01/08

2.5/4

Jeremy Brock's screenplay hits the high spots, but leaves many characters - particularly the status-striving Charles - sketchy and incomplete.

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08/01/08

B+

You could wish for more, but for that there's still the epic-length miniseries. If you want just two hours of mournful, lovely melodrama of manners, this is a fine choice.

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08/01/08

2.5/4

Thompson, though, is marvelous; with understated precision and grace, she makes every word count. Also excellent is Michael Gambon.

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08/01/08

2.5/4

What's missing from Goode's performance and from the film as whole is the layer upon layer of accumulated motive -- the gradual evolution of a man's complex desires and even-more-complicated fears.

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08/01/08

3/4

The fine acting benefits from luxury casting (Thompson and Michael Gambon as Sebastian's separated parents) and the intensity of Goode and Atwell.

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08/01/08

2.5/4

When the increasingly anguished and dipsomaniacal Sebastian exits the story, he takes much of our interest with him.

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08/01/08

C

Jarrold's reduction of the story is so archetypal that it's indistinguishable from soap opera.

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08/01/08

3.5/5

The film, a distinctly secular take on Waugh’s religiosity, is far more interested in the battle of blind faith vs. rigid unbelief and its devastating effects.

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08/01/08

83/100

...more fun than expected, and in its own middlebrow way, peculiarly true to Waugh's own vision.

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08/01/08

3/4

Its scope is broad -- it has three flashbacks in the first 10 minutes before sticking with the 1920s and 1930s -- but its focus is sharp.

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07/31/08

2/4

[A] slowly paced, uninvolving 'revisitation' of Waugh's novel.

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07/31/08