While a period romance at its core, Brideshead Revisited's story really revolves around religion. The Flyte family are devout Roman Catholics, a religion not so widespread in mid-1900 English aristocratic families. Lady Marchmain, played by the ever-so-wonderful Emma Thompson, is the spiritual leader of the family. Her scorn for Sebastian's homosexuality splits the family in twain, driving poor Sebastian to seek solace in the bottle. As Charles' romantic interest shifts from Sebastian to Julia, this only worsens. Charles and Julia grow closer, but a union of the two is forbidden by Lady Marchmain, as Charles is a self-proclaimed atheist.
Though Charles is the central character of Brideshead Revisited, in relation to his passivity, the Flyte familiy are far more interesting and complex characters. Rounded out by wonderful performances by Michael Gambon as Lord Marchmain and Greta Scacchi as his Italian mistress, the interaction among the family members quickly becomes the most intriguing storyline. The story also tends to jump around a bit, sometimes skipping several years and leading to a slight feeling of incohesiveness. From a cinematic and artistic standpoint, the movie is undoubtedly beautiful. The costuming and extravagent sets are well thought out, making it easy to understand how the upper-middle-class Charles would so quickly become seduced by the lavishness and opulence of Brideshead and the Flyte family. Unfortunately, stunning backgrounds and good supporting casts cannot always carry a movie. Although I will not go so far as to say that I was bored at any point, there were several times where the story seemed to slow to a snail's pace and I found myself hoping that we would see some resolution in the near future. I will say that, while I do not regret having watched the movie, Brideshead is not somewhere I care to revisit anytime soon.
From a bonus feature standpoint, Brideshead Revisited offers a few deleted scenes, an audio commentary by the filmmaker and a featurette entitled "The World of Brideshead." The deleted scenes were just as well left deleted and the audio commentary did little for me, but the featurette did offer some nice background on both the time period and the social climate of Brideshead. It also touched on some of the filmmaking, including costuming, set design, etc. Overall, I found it almost as interesting as the movie itself.
