4/5 Some Seem Too Ready To Dub This "Brideshead Revisited Revisited" Don't They?
  by Penny Dreadful (Under Your Skin)
When a novel as popular as this has been these fifty years and more is committed to film not once but twice in the space of a generation, it is often the case that comparisons to the first filmed version will weigh the second project down to the point it loses any shred of singular identity and drowns in the first project's wake. I hear so many people making comparisons between this "edition" of Brideshead Revisited and the early-eighties Masterpiece Theater/Jeremy Irons/Anthony Andrews/John Mortimer outing that I pity the cast and makers of this earnest twenty-first century take on Evelyn Waugh's circumspect morality play. Having never read the source novel or viewed any visit to Brideshead but this one, I am at best a neutral observer, at worst an unenlightened naïf who witnesses the dawn and thinks she has seen the day itself, but that being as it may, I found this tale both too understated and too restrained to merit the label "classic." The performances were extraordinarily good here, no exceptions, and the settings were lovely as befit the high emotions the story attempts to convey, but whether the fault lay in too ambitious a condensation of source material or simply a failure to translate to the sensibilities of this century, Julian Jarrold's film fails to captivate. It's lovely, it's unique, it aims very high indeed, but in the end the 2008 Brideshead Revisited seems tame and polite when in my feeling it should have moved a viewer with its tragic sense of what lay behind all that British restraint.

3/5 Clueless
  by Ford Ka (Edinburgh, Scotland)
If you have some vague but pleasant memories of reading Brideshead Revisited (or seeing the TV series), the impression you were left with was that of a lovely, charming, but somewhat clueless period piece, and you would like a rerun, this is your movie. The screenplay lost several essential parts of the novel and what we are offered is yet again charming, lovely etc but noticeably clueless. It is not an excuse for going against the spirit of the novel even though it is fairly obvious that a novel of such complexity (in case you missed it - yes, it is a novel of great complexity!) cannot be faithfully presented during two hours. Somehow the limited time did not stop the authors from introducing all the characters of the novel even if most them do not get a chance to utter two full sentences in the movie.
BR is a story of spiritual maturation of an artist set against the decline of the English aristocracy. Charles Ryder of the movie is an artist basically because we are told so quite repeatedly. Yes, he draws once, hangs a painting on the wall, and makes an appearance at an art show. Most of us have done as much in life and we don't think of ourselves as artists.
Part of the maturation is fascination with the beautiful Lord Sebastian Flyte (I find Ben Whishaw somewhat lacking in masculine beauty and a bathing scene stolen from Talented Mr Ripley did not help a bit) which Waugh sees as juvenile and aesthetic (and vaguely homoerotic although not necessarily sexual) and which develops after some years into a heterosexual relation with Sebastian's sister Julia.
This vision of emotional development is beyond the grasp of modern screenplay writers (the times are different, it is true, now unless you are gay you are supposed to start having crushes on girls at twelve at the latest insetad of waiting into your twenties) so the two siblings fight for the attention of Mr Ryder instead in the lovely setting of Venice. When Julia wins the contest, Sebastian succumbs to alcoholism. This in turn elegantly spares the authors from any attempts of explaining his lot in any other way - he drinks himself to death because he was rejected by his lover. Neat, simple, and completely against the spirit of the novel.
Probably, the spirit of the novel was too closely related to the Holy Spirit that the authors needed to exorcise at least some of it. They failed to note, however, that it was precisely the backbone that kept this (I agree) somewhat clueless though doubtlessly charming novel together. The results makes a nice viewing but if it leaves you asking endless questions "Why? Why? Why?" you have to resort to the original book or the twenty-five years old TV series.

4/5 Discontinued?
  by Gerald Mccann (San Diego,, CA United States)
I,too, would like to get the Blue Ray version of Brideshead Revisited. When was this version discontinued and why can't I purchase this version, new or used? Can anyone help solve this mystery?

1/5 Dementia
  by J. J. Smith (Illinois)
Amazon: how do you discontinue something that was never released? When was a Blu-Ray version of this film available?