Over the course of the past few weeks, I've been watching way too many movies that I ordinarily wouldn't have been interested in, just because Matthew Goode is in them and I'm secretly 14 years old. (Chasing Liberty made me want to repeatedly punch myself in the eye, and all I could think about was how weird it is that Mandy Moore married Ryan Adams. My Family and Other Animals was hilarious and a pleasant surprise, and Imagine Me & You was tolerable.) While I do think he is genuinely talented and not just a pretty face, he has unfortunately been in some films that aren't particularly good by a long shot.
Anyways, yesterday I finally got around to watching Brideshead Revisited, which I legitimately have been wanting to see for a while, having loved the book. I wish I'd seen it in theatres, because everything and everyone was beautiful. Castle Howard is so gorgeous. Anyways, I'm not really sure what I thought of it overall. Ben Whishaw's Sebastian was perfectly heartbreaking, but I do wish that there had been more time spent on the Charles/Sebastian relationship. While it was nice that the homoeroticism that was very obvious in the book was fully acknowledged on Sebastian's part, I didn't really get the impression that the attraction was reciprocated. Sure, there was the occasional sidelong glance or gesture, but my interpretation of Charles from the book was one who would have gladly kissed Sebastian. In the book, I thought that Charles' considered Sebastian's beauty with something between lust, infatuation, and an artist's aesthetic reverence. At the same time, Charles was also always very distant, which I thought Matthew Goode's performance captured well. Now, I know that I have to take the book and the film as completely separate entities, but I found the film to be much less passionate and compelling. The film was visually stunning, but fell short when it came to the script.
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