Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Admirable film.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The movie starts in the present (Spring of 1943) when, as a British Army officer, Charles Ryder (Mathew Goode), actually 'revisits Brideshead,' and reflects on different points in his past at Brideshead (a huge palatial estate in England). So, there are several flashbacks to various points in Charles's reflective story. The story begins 20 years earlier when Charles leaves Paddington to study history at Oxford. Since he is from a middle-class background and feels as though he might be out of place at Oxford, he has his cousin show him how to fit in at Oxford. He soon takes up with a group of effete snobs, and through them, becomes good friends with Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) (the Boy-Man, Sebastian personifies the adjective "effete fop" to a tee). When Sebastian takes Charles to see his family's estate at Brideshead, Charles is awestruck with its beauty and vastness. After he leaves Brideshead and returns to his home in Paddington, he receives a telegram that Sebastian is seriously injured and needs his presence at Brideshead. When he arrives, he is picked up at the train station by Sebastian's sister, Julia (Haley Atwell). On the way back to the mansion, Julie tells him that Sebastian's injury, sustained while playing cricket, is a small crack in his foot bone.Charles's return to Brideshead begins the a long hedonistic summer of bliss, sans parents, for Charles and Sebastian--drinking, lovemaking, and swimming. This bliss comes to an end when Sebastian's mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) returns with Sebastian's older brother, Bridey (Ed Stoppard) and younger sister, Cordelia (Felicity Jones). At this point, Charles--a self-proclaimed atheist--learns how deeply this aristocratic family is influenced by the strict Catholicism, imposed on the family by Lady Marchamain: After her arrival, Sebastian and Julia cower in childlike obedience to their strong-willed mother. Unlike Sebastian and Julia, Bridey and Cordelia neither question nor fight their mother's strong religiosity. Thus, the need to scold them never seems to be necessary. The Brideshead location of the story is temporality broken when Sebastian and Julia are invited to spend time in Venice with their father, Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon), and his mistress, Cara (Greta Scacchi). Lady Marchmain, fearful of Sebastian's need for alcoholic escapism, asks Charles to accompany him to Venice to look after him.Although Venice is not the paradise that Brideshead is for Charles, it is a demi-paradise: Charles is impressed by being in Venice and seeing its art and architecture, and feeling its ambiance. The Venice break in the story supplies us with a contrast as to how Charles sees Sebastian and Julia in different places and under different parents. In one scene, as Lord Marchmain is seated on a large couch between his children with his arms around both of them, he says to Charles "You must think of us as a family of monsters." Later, Charles watches Julia and Sebastian as they play like children on the beach-- free of any guilt. As the 'children' play on the beach, Charles has a chance to talk privately to Cara. She basically tells him how Lady Marchmain had suffocated the children under Catholicism. He then says to her, "But surely YOU are Catholic too." She then explains, "Yes, but, here here, people are not so much bothered by guilt as they are in England: Here, people just live their lives and go to confession for absolution from their sins." She then goes on to warn Charles that, although his affair with Sebastian is just a phase, it is far more serious to Sebastian.Although Venice is a place of freedom, it is also a place of mystery, full of twists, turns, dark corners, and cul-de-sacs. It is a place where one who is not used to dealing with freedom can easily become lost. In one scene, the family goes to a gay night street carnival. At this carnival of Venice, the music is loud, percussive, and rhythmic, and the people are costumed and masked. At one point, Julia gets lost in this pushing crowd and is diverted off into a wet tunnel—lost and confused. Charles follows her and kisses her while Sebastian looks on at a distance—realizing that Charles's love for him is no longer singular. (The idyllic relationship between Charles and Sebastian is broken and can never be the same again.) When they return to Brideshead, Lady Marchmain notices that Sebastian is not the same and wonders what had happened to make this change. She also warns Charles not to be misled about Julia: her future is already fixed, and marriage outside of the Faith is out of the question. Lady Marchmain has Sebastian followed at Oxford since his drinking is becoming worse. She also tries to have Charles watch him and cuts off his money to prevent him from drinking. When Charles gives Sebastian money to buy alcohol and he turns up drunk at Julia's Coming Out Gala—-an evening at which Lady Marchamain announces Julia's engagement to Rex Mattram (Jonathan Cake)—Sebastian embarrasses himself. Lady Marchmain then pulls Charles aside and tells him to leave Brideshead. At this point, Charles loses contact with Brideshead and Sebastian until sometime later when Lady Marchamain contacts Charles in Paddington and asks him to find Sebastian in Morocco and bring him back home. Charles tries to do this and fails.Charles gets married, has children, and enjoys a successful painting career with his jungle paintings after traveling to South American for two years. All of this period is a bit murky in the movie until he meets Julia again on a passenger ship. Since both of their marriages are shams by this time, they both decide to divorce and marry each other. However, fate (or God) steps in to prevent this "sinful union" to take place....

Not a bad film at all. Unfortunately it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Without really making anything wrong, it sticks to the story line, the cast has no surprises and its decently played it still doesn't make it. It is like a cover of a really great song. If the artist doesn't put its own mark on it it will still be a copy, and as such always fail to be better than the original It is like a pale copy of the original masterpiece. If you want to see brilliance, the original Brideshead of 1981 with Anthony Andrews http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000762/?ref_=tt_cl_t6 and Jeremy Irons http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000460/?ref_=tt_cl_t1 is the one to watch http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083390/

interesting for cast and not exactly for adaptation itself. because it seems be a run. and the price is, first, the lost of nuances. than, the fall by novel because its competition is not only with the book but with a real good series.solution for a wise verdict is to ignore its source. in this case, all seems be better. a slice from an old world,a cold religious confession, a dominator character, destiny and choices, love story and a bitter return. after its end, for not remain only with memories about a nice film, the decent choice is to read the novel. not for confrontation with the movie. only for use the chance to be part from a seductive, delicate, refined space. and for explore a beautiful literary style.

"Sebastian's gone missing. He's in a house in Morocco…" It's not only because of lines like this that I think Brideshead Revisited is one of the worst films I have seen in quite a long time…but it doesn't help. You know a film is in trouble when actors of the calibre of Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon absolutely stink up the screen. Thompson is perfectly (and unintentionally) grotesque as Lady Marchmain. What on earth were the scriptwriters and director thinking? The film is based, allegedly, on the Evelyn Waugh novel of the same name (which was made into a truly wonderful TV series in the early '80s), but takes such liberties with the plot that poor old Evelyn must be spinning in his grave. The element of divine grace which informs the novel is simply absent (albeit replaced, to a minor extent, by an entirely spurious and dramatically inexplicable sense of guilt on the part of Charles Ryder, the main character); and even the Catholicism whose tenets direct, consciously or otherwise, the life trajectories of many of the main characters is largely reduced to parody. What else? Sebastian and Julia Flyte are spectacularly miscast; the actor playing Charles' father (the normally reliable Patrick Malahide) badly misjudges the tone of his character; Brideshead, Sebastian's brother, rather brought to mind Michael Palin portraying a WWI German flying ace; the whole emotional driving force of the novel (Charles' graduation from his early infatuation with Sebastian to his more mature love for Julia) is shot to pieces by the asinine attempt to portray, quite early in the film, a kind of rivalry for Charles' affections between Julia and Sebastian. As someone who loves both the novel and the TV series deeply, I found this movie truly revolting. Shouldn't have been made. Don't see it.