Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Reviews Counted: 128
Fresh: 80 | Rotten: 48
Suspenseful and beautifully mounted, Brideshead Revisited does an able job condensing Evelyn Waugh's novel.
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 10
Suspenseful and beautifully mounted, Brideshead Revisited does an able job condensing Evelyn Waugh's novel.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 21,503
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Movie Info
Evelyn Waugh's classic novel of love and the British class system has been given a polished screen adaptation in this film version from director Julian Jarrold. The tale opens during WWII, when Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), an English military officer, is stationed at a country estate that has been converted into a military base. Jarrold uses this time-frame and setting as a framing device, and then flashes back in time to Charles' days as a scholar in the 1920s. It becomes clear that he was
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Cast
-
Hayley Atwell
Julia Flyte -
Ben Whishaw
Sebastian Flyte -
Matthew Goode
Charles Ryder -
Emma Thompson
Lady Marchmain -
Michael Gambon
Lord Marchmain -
Greta Scacchi
Carla -
Jonathan Cake
Rex Mottram -
Patrick Malahide
Mr. Edward Ryder -
Thomas Morrison
Hooper -
David Barrass
ship's barber -
Anna Madeley
Celia Ryder -
Sarah Crowden
Lady guest -
Stephen Carlile
English lord -
Peter Barnes
American professor -
Richard Teverson
Cousin Jasper
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Brideshead Revisited Trailer & Photos
All Critics (132) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (83) | Rotten (49) | DVD (9)
Performances are good - Thompson and Gambon impress - but the insipid music is dreadful.
Top CriticThompson, though, is marvelous; with understated precision and grace, she makes every word count. Also excellent is Michael Gambon.
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.
If you're in the market for a veddy British drama and miss seeing Emma Thompson in her natural environment, Brideshead Revisited is a worthwhile two-hour meditation on faith (and the lack thereof).
Yes, it's a compressed version, but I found it very enjoyable.
If it's a choice between the movie's 135 minutes or the 659 minutes of the miniseries, I'd say it's no choice at all. The shorter version is the one that seems long.
Tepid
A bleak and often befuddling 2-hour-15-minute disappointment.
slow and beautiful, rather than intense, dramatic and insightful
it still has the high-class dramatic feel you'd expect from something you would have watched on PBS twenty years ago
Occasionally interesting, always beautiful and regularly tedious, the film attempts to capture a time and a feeling yet it ultimately fails to provide the depth needed to make it wholly successful.
In the end, you're torn between praising the atmosphere and performances and lamenting the second-act sag.
Extras on the disc include a full length audio commentary, a set of deleted scenes, and a featurette on the making of the film.
Certainly passable, but less than spectacular, Brideshead Revisited is an authentic and decent adaptation of a well-known novel, but nothing more.
The events in the film felt rushed and overly obvious, as if Harry Potter's adopted parents dressed him in an "Ask me about wizardry" t-shirt before Hagrid ever turned up.
Those with warm memories of the BBC television serial in the 1980s will find much in this Brideshead to enjoy.
Even if the material is familiar, even if it has been done well before, there is room in a great book for a new interpretation.
Audience Reviews for Brideshead Revisited
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Sebastian Flyte: I should like to bury something precious, in every place I've been happy. And then when I was old, and ugly and miserable, I could come back, and dig it up, and remember.
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Foreign Titles
- Wiedersehen mit Brideshead (DE)
- Regreso a la mansion Brideshead (ES)
