Kevin Jackson,
Withnail & I. (BFI Modern Classics).
London: BFI Publishing, 2004.
ISBN: 1 84457 035 5
96pp
(Book supplied by BFI Publishing)

What is one to say about a film whose very author-director treats it in a somewhat dismissive fashion? Who freely states that he informed the crew on the first day of shooting that he had no idea what he was doing? That very nearly never saw the light of day, having been held in the can for a year after completion? Whose pleasures are predominantly aural, not visual? Whose aficionados employ it as a triggering device for excessive drunkenness?

Kevin Jackson admits that one can say any number of things about Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I (1986), none of them consistent and all of them mutually contradictory. That Withnail & Iis “a work of unusual thematic slightness and imperceptible cinematic flair – all but plotless, little more than a plumped-up anecdote of wasted time, pretentiously masquerading as confessional art” (8). That, at the same time, it is “perhaps the funniest, and certainly the most profound, comedy ever produced by British cinema” (9). That, above all, it constitutes one of finest examples of what Jackson dubs “the Bildungsfilm,” the fighting against the coming of age that, perhaps, most indelibly appears in Fellini’s I vitelloni (France/Italy, 1953).

Part of the reason Jackson finds himself so transparently defensive about Robinson’s comedic achievements is that the film takes risks that cannot simply be categorized politely, and therefore dismissively, as “politically incorrect.” Withnail and I resolutely adheres to a lads-only lens upon a narrow corner of experience and compounds that deliberate myopia by allowing its co-dependent protagonists to engage in non-stop mano a mano malarkey. Whether consuming copious amounts of alcohol, lighter fluid out of grim necessity, and the hallucinogenic enormity of the “Camberwell Carrot,” the cadaverous Withnail and his anonymous cohort (given the surname Marwood in the script) provide the behavioural template for any number of their similarly squalid successors, whether the protagonists of the English television series Men Behaving Badly and their equal opportunity distaff dissolutes of Absolutely Fabulous to the teen-age tomfoolery of the various incarnations of American Pie (USA, 1999) and Wayne’s World (USA, 1992). So ubiquitous and seemingly universal is the appeal of the chronic self-abuser that you can almost imagine Richard Grant taking on the character as part of a “reality tv” endeavour that provides training in the fine art of alcoholic adventurism: “Bleary Eye for the Sober Guy.”

However, what separates Robinson’s admirably constructed film from the run-of-the-mill race for the gutter can be traced not only to his superior scriptwriting but also the unremittingly elegiac undercurrent beneath all the carrying on and capricious self-indulgence. Jackson reminds us that that Withnail & I remains “a hangover film,” “a Coming Down film,” “a film about endings: the end of a friendship, the end of youth, the end of the 1960s” (14). For all their affability and brotherly commitment, Withnail and Marwood exemplify the manner in which, even the most durable of associations, bears at its core the acid of mutual annihilation. Robinson captures “friendship in all its full horror,” the countless ways we can create bonds of misery when we fail to acknowledge the necessity of the boundaries of individual integrity (12). It is, therefore, ironic how much the Maxim set, and other followers of the “lads'” agenda, have adopted the film as a virtual blueprint for being a bounder, for it illustrates how lonely and emotionally arid such a way of life can be.

Another strength of Robinson’s approach, that Jackson draws attention to, is how much the picture erodes the attraction of the pastoral ideal. When heritage films of the period were setting garden parties at country estates as Merchant and Ivory drew attention to the allure of the open air, Withnail & I, Jackson observes, encompasses “a truly August disdain for the countryside, and regards it as a zone of chill, hunger, mud, psychotic peasantry and potentially lethal wildlife” (49). If these two young men imagine they can find respite from their calamities amongst the attractions of the Lake District, they reap the erosion of their illusions and must acknowledge how “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake.” Robinson may fault himself for technical ineptitude, but the grim visuals he constructs for this portion of the film and astute casting of the loony locals, who seem like cast members of a touring company of Cold Comfort Farm, evidence that his skills do not lie with his dialogue alone.

But, oh, how those words are so eminently quotable. Not the terse, one trick pony of the kind celebrated in Clint Eastwood’s or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cold-hearted comebacks, Robinson’s dialogue has a rich, at times barmy, baroque tone, most notably when uttered by Richard Griffith’s unforgettably fey and forlorn Uncle Monty. Eccentric yet endlessly engrossing in his self-absorbed monologues, who can forget his explanation for why he prefers vegetables to flowers: “I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees …”? Or his query to Marwood as to his sexual inclinations: “Are you a sponge or a stone?”

Jackson’s affectionate, if undemanding encomium to the pleasures of Robinson’s film may not stretch the reader’s intellectual muscles but continually and entertainingly underscores the strengths and sympathies of this now iconic film. His focus on the fine points of mise en scene and scenario remind one of the old-fashioned, but routinely undervalued crafts of dialogue and characterization. At the same time, failure to succumb to the film’s emotionally engaging undertone of sorrow and regret will only make us, to borrow one of Withnail’s neologisms, “scrubbers” one and all.

David Sanjek
USA.
Created on: Tuesday, 19 July 2005 | Last Updated: 19-Jul-05