Hooper Goes Hollywood

What a comfort it is to learn that the makers of the new Brideshead Revisited tried to ignore the famous mini-series and "return to the book" for inspiration. This act of fidelity to what Waugh wrote would be slightly more impressive if they had actually decided to adapt what they found in its pages, rather than ... well, I'll let the filmmakers tell it:

As much as it is a story about a lost period of English history — a final shining moment before everything changed forever — “Brideshead” is a novel about the inexorable pull of Catholicism. The issues it raises are particularly relevant now, Mr. Brock said, though viewers may interpret what they see differently depending on the role of faith in their own lives ...

“In that tug between individual freedom and fundamentalist religion, there’s a story that’s apposite for our time,” Mr. Brock said. “In the modern age that’s something we’re all dealing with.”

...

An important divergence in tone from Waugh’s novel, Mr. Jarrold said, comes in the closing scene, when Charles — now back at Brideshead during World War II — talks to Lieutenant Hooper, a fellow soldier who has a rough accent and the forthright views of a modern man unimpressed by the aristocracy. How to portray him led to long discussions about the way that Waugh “is sometimes profoundly undemocratic” and disdainful of Hooper and what he represents, Mr. Jerrold said.

In the book Hooper is “described as a traveling salesman with a wet handshake,” he said. “But he’s the future of England, and the hope of the 1945 generation, and we’ve put a positive spin on him.”

We’ve put a positive spin on him ... I love it! And so would Waugh, I suspect, since the two men sound, frankly, less like real-life Hollywood boobs than like Wavian caricatures of the same. Catholicism is wicked and fundamentalist, Hooper is the hope of the future - but of course they're being very faithful to the book!

Comments

They're English. Fundamentalism in England is any religion that is taken seriously. That's how they can call Evelyn Waugh's Catholicism fundamentalist with a straight face.

Posted by Tim Dees | July 21, 2008 3:05 PM

Brideshead Revisited is the perfect antidote to mindless, brain dead, garbage like Batman: Dark Knight.

We need more movies like Brideshead Revisited and less stupid, vapid superhero movies.

Superhero movies are hurting America by dumbing our culture down to death. They turn peoples' brains into mush and have no redeeming artistic merit.

Frank Miller can't shine Evelyn Waugh's shoes.

Posted by Seth | July 21, 2008 4:48 PM

Next, I'd like Atlas Shrugged, but where the productive people give up their strike and decide to work their hardest for the society to which they owe so much.

Posted by tom | July 21, 2008 5:29 PM

Isn't it, strictly speaking, impossible for a Catholic to be a fundamentalist by definition? Fundamentalism kind of implies Sola Scriptura, at least in my book.

And Tim Dees, with all due respect, England does have some notable Christian leaders who do in fact take their faith seriously. One would have a hard time calling Michael Nazir-Ali, the Anglican Bishop of Rochester, a secularist.

Posted by Hector | July 21, 2008 5:36 PM

Et in Arcadia, Hooper.

Posted by Mr. Homais | July 21, 2008 5:39 PM

Seth, I'm guessing you didn't actually see The Dark Knight; otherwise you wouldn't call it "mindless, braindead, garbage." I walked out of the new Batman movie with a similar feeling as when I walked out of No Country for Old Men: I felt like I'd just been knocked on my behind.

Oh, and boo hiss to the new crappy Brideshead remake.

Posted by Philip Marlowe | July 21, 2008 6:00 PM

"Isn't it, strictly speaking, impossible for a Catholic to be a fundamentalist by definition" Hector

TR: Well yes but "fundamentalist" has become kind of shorthand for any strictly orthodox person who believes his/her religion is true.

Although it might be possible to refer to a "Catholic equivalent of a fundamentalist" in a sense. Some ultramontanists favored a narrow interpretation of all Papal statements. Although the term "ultramontanism" has mostly fallen out of fashion so the modern equivalents to it might just be termed "fundamentalist" for convenience. The term "fundamentalist" might also allow it to just mean anyone who holds to the fundamentals of their religion, but that's an interpretation less perjorative than is usually meant.

Posted by Thomas R | July 21, 2008 6:27 PM

Ross, in your earlier post (linked above), you complain that the filmakers intend to "turn Brideshead into a story about how Catholicism can ruin your life." I'm sorry -- that is exactly the story the novel tells. I admire this book a great deal, have read it several times, and just finished it again this weekend. I accept that Waugh intended something different, but in my mind there is no question that the book explains in loving and persuasive detail exactly how Catholicism ruined the lives of all its major charaters. To be fair, it also attempts to explain what benefits Catholicism brought them in recompense -- and on that score reasonable minds can differ. A reader in sync with a Catholic (and Waugh's) viewpoint may well understand why the characters accept and even actively precipitate the ruin of all their happiness. But this reader, even though sympathetic to a religious viewpoint, can only see a perverse masochism in the characters' choices.

Posted by David A | July 21, 2008 6:29 PM

I haven't read "Brideshead," and am not sure I plan to. But if someone were to say that, e.g. "The Heart of the Matter", one of my favorite novels, were about how "Catholicism can ruin your life", that would be just absurd. It's true that all the Christian characters in "The Heart of the Matter" are left dreadfully unhappy at the end, and their religion appears to bring them nothing but unhappiness. But that would be to miss the deeper point that, as the saying goes, it's better to be an unhappy Socrates than a happy pig, and perhaps (according to Greene and presumibly Waugh also) it's better to be an unhappy Christian than a happy secularist.

Posted by Hector | July 21, 2008 7:42 PM

Re: Well yes but "fundamentalist" has become kind of shorthand for any strictly orthodox person who believes his/her religion is true.

I'm aware of that modern usage. I think it's a f--ing idiotic usage, and I see no reason why people who know something about the meaning of words should have to dumb down our language to cater to the historical illiteracy of the American usage.

I mean by that logic who would _not_ want to be a fundamentalist? Why be a Catholic if you don't think that Catholicism is true, and other religions at least partially false? For example.

Posted by Hector | July 21, 2008 7:49 PM

Re: Well yes but "fundamentalist" has become kind of shorthand for any strictly orthodox person who believes his/her religion is true.

I'm aware of that modern usage. I think it's a f--ing idiotic usage, and I see no reason why people who know something about the meaning of words should have to dumb down our language to cater to the historical illiteracy of the American usage.

I mean by that logic who would _not_ want to be a fundamentalist? Why be a Catholic if you don't think that Catholicism is true, and other religions at least partially false? For example.

Posted by Hector | July 21, 2008 7:50 PM

I've long wanted to make a version of Brave New World that remains completely true to the original plot but clearly casts the audience on the side of the Fordists against the Savage.

Posted by Senescent | July 21, 2008 8:27 PM

If I recall correctly, though, Hooper was not too well-drawn a character to begin with; his obnoxiousness was more taken for granted than proved.

I am more disturbed by the cutting of two of the most entertaining characters, Cordelia and Anthony Blanche. I just hope Rex "Sacred Monkeys" Mottram is retained to a sufficient extent.

Posted by James Kabala | July 21, 2008 10:14 PM

BNW is not a book I love, but I think there's clear indication that both the Fordists and the Savage are kind of wrong. The Savage might be less wrong, but that doesn't quite make him right. In time Huxley himself began to feel the Savage was too lacking in sense to be as sympathetic as he originally imagined. (Although I think he always saw him a bit ambivalently)

So I suppose a total opposite would be for them both to be right. The Fordists really have created a happy wonderful society, but those that need something different are okay too. They'll end up on islands where they can find a different life and live happily ever after. Meanwhile the Savage will end up dead because that's suitably noble and artistic for him. Everyone's happy in the best of possible Brave New Worlds.

Posted by Thomas R | July 22, 2008 12:30 AM

I accept that Waugh intended something different, but in my mind there is no question that the book explains in loving and persuasive detail exactly how Catholicism ruined the lives of all its major charaters.

If anything ruined [some of] the characters, it's being of the aristocracy, or aspiring to it.

Posted by pb | July 22, 2008 1:34 AM

If anything ruined [some of] the characters, it's being of the aristocracy, or aspiring to it.

Why? Because "we" can't have anything disturbing "our" ressentiment-driven egalitarian ideology?

Posted by radtrad | July 22, 2008 6:15 AM

I think being a catholic in England (and maybe in the US, by means of cultural inheritance) is an intense, tough, against-the-mainstream personal choice, and that fact sharpens the believings and makes more complicated the whole thing. For the ones born (as I am) in catholic countries, the whole moral question is much more relaxed.

In a delicious scene of a novel by Nancy Mitford, an english aristocrat girl says to her french lover: you're married and living in sin with me; that must be the cruelest torture to you, being a catholic.

Au contraire, ma cherie, answers the frenchman. This is the most common among us.

Well, she says, English catholics do suffer a lot and have awfully complicated feelings over it. They write novels about that, you know.

(As Mitford and Waugh were old friends, this is one friendly hell of a jab)

Posted by Ignacio | July 22, 2008 7:57 AM

To be fair, they said they want to return to the book for inspiration -- they did NOT say they want to be true to the book.

Posted by scritic | July 22, 2008 11:06 AM

This seems as good a post as any to lodge a complaint: Ross, where is your review of The Dark Knight? You seem enough a movie geek to have gone already, and still I see no mention of the morbid blockbuster to which you *must* have some response.

Posted by Zack | July 22, 2008 12:24 PM

Re: I think being a catholic in England (and maybe in the US, by means of cultural inheritance) is an intense, tough, against-the-mainstream personal choice

I don't think that's necessarily true, at least with regard to demographics. The United States has a much bigger % of Catholics than England. I think the USA is about 25% practicing Catholic and another 8% or so nonpracticing but raised Catholic. In parts of the country (New England, New Mexico, parts of the Great Lakes region) a majority or close to it of the population is Catholic.

Posted by Hector | July 22, 2008 1:24 PM

RadTrad,

Er, might it be because the aristocracy (as a class) don't work for a living, and live off the work of others? Not that most of the elites in capitalist society don't do the same, of course. There's nothing particularly "modern" about a dislike for aristocracy- do you remember the Anabaptists and the Levellers?

Posted by Hector | July 22, 2008 1:30 PM

The trailers made me cringe. I was excited about a new adaptation of Brideshead Revisited as it's one of my favorite books. Sadly, this version seems destined to disappoint. I'm getting the BBC one from netflix instead.

PS Well, said Tim Dees.

Posted by Susan | July 22, 2008 3:09 PM

The trailers made me cringe. I was excited about a new adaptation of Brideshead Revisited as it's one of my favorite books. Sadly, this version seems destined to disappoint. I'm getting the BBC one from netflix instead.

PS Well, said Tim Dees.

Posted by Susan | July 22, 2008 3:09 PM

"I don't think that's necessarily true, at least with regard to demographics. The United States has a much bigger % of Catholics than England." Hector

TR: True. Catholics can't become king and were seen as more alien. Yorkshire born astronomer Fred Hoyle describes how the boys in his school would go to the Catholic school to throw rocks at the students and this was just seen as a boyish lark or tradition.

Catholics are in the top ten denominations in every contemporary US state and in the top 4 in 48 states. In Arkansas and North Carolina they are not in the top 4 denominations. (In Arkansas, where I'm originally from, the top 4 are: two Baptist groups, the Churches of Christ, and the Methodists.) Still the early US shared many to most of the 18th c. British view of Catholics. Traditionally Catholics faced a similar, if slightly less intense, alienation in the South until quite recent times. Exceptions to that in the South are Louisiana and, to an extent, Maryland.

Posted by Thomas R | July 22, 2008 5:00 PM

Hector: I don't know enough about american society to sustain what i wrote as an impression, so I admit yor correction.

Probably it all depends on where your catholic roots do come from. I don't see mexican catholics sharing Julia Mottram's dilemma; I don't see them even understanding it. And the irish or the polish? I don't know, but I tend to think they wouldn't, either.

I'd like to point a trivial confusion in other marginal subject: the british tv version is not BBC's. Surprisingly enough it's Granada's.

Posted by Ignacio | July 22, 2008 6:54 PM

Ignacio,

American society actually has a non-trivial number of people who convert to Catholicism, I know a few people like that. It should be made clear that as I said above, there are significant sections of the US where Catholicism is the majority religion, and other sections where it is by far the plurality. The state of Rhode Island is over 60% Catholic although presumably a lot of those are not really practicing.

My understanding is that for the Irish and Polish especially, Catholicism is intimately tied up with national identity since for much of their history the Irish and Poles were under the domination of hated and non-Catholic foreign neighbors. Actually a fairly significant number of Mexicans, Brazilians and Central American immigrants do convert _away_ from Catholicism, typically to Pentecostalism or other evangelical Protestant groupings, so perhaps in that case that would be the counter-cultural choice.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 7:38 AM

Although it's a non-trivial number in percentage terms Catholics may well have less converts than Judaism or most forms of Protestantism.

Catholics in the US are not particularly proselytizing. Catholic services are also not particularly entertaining. We don't have big screens, people shouting, or much in the way of music channels. The academic-set could still be a source of potential converts, but Catholic colleges nowadays tend to say confused or heretical things.

Posted by Thomas R | July 23, 2008 1:06 PM

Thomas R.,

Maybe. I was just going by my personal experience, and I quite a few people who had experiences like Governor Bobby Jindal. I think you're right that the academic set are more likely to convert to Catholicism, possibly because of its intellectual tradition and the balance between faith and reason. I converted to Anglicanism, not Catholicism, but I definitely consider myself more towards the High Church side of the ledger.

I don't think it's _all_ Catholic colleges that say "confused or heretical" things. There are a lot of Catholic colleges out there and some of them are more liberal than others. I doubt that Providence College, say, is particularly 'heretical'.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 1:22 PM