Brideshead Revisited - Episode 10 - PART 2

[@phieq]

this is all so bloody brilliant...head and shoulders over the movie version.

[@lnyawilliamsmoore4380]

Bridey. Spot on about Charles, Julia and Rex.

[@16toulousse]

The most brilliant scene. Heartbreaking

[@muuanmies7372]

amazing one shot

[@randomsamno9]

To be fair to Bridey, he was just telling it as it is. I wouldn't lie about my beliefs just to please other people and I wouldn't expect him to either, he didn't mean to offend anyone, he just didn't want to lie.

[@wmperkins25]

that's not the idea during this time period, She was living in adultery and knew it, so Bridey's statement was true and she really had no reason to be upset by it, however it did hit a nerve with her because of her belief system and the guilt that was always in the back of her mind. One reason she brought up the subject of marriage with Charles which he ignored.-One more point- I do agree with hammertapping re: his statement Christ's compassion and forgiveness, He did say "go and sin no more"

[@olearysgrave]

Mortal Sin by Julia Flyte. Diana Quick is quite brilliant here approaching the kernel of the book.

[@riseuplight]

Julia has so many of these breakdown moments in the book.. they are very well done here

[@suzycreamcheesez]

but isn't Julia the one who said "damn people (and what they say and think)"?

[@theresep7386]

Julia is hurt by a guilty conscience, not by Bridey's words which are objectively true.

[@susannevollmer2347]

Yes, but without any feeling. Follow the rules that`s all in his religion and in his head?

[@Twentythousandlps]

Julia is a little slow on the uptick when Bridey says he can't possibly bring Beryl to the house. A Catholic would grasp why he said that. And he was "getting back" at them for their giggling and smirking when he told them about his engagement. That was very hurtful, but he gave them the dish served cold.

[@YooTuba]

Yeah, if Julia were really OK with what she was doing, then her brother's words wouldn't affect her so much. She'd just dismiss it. The fact is, Julia really feels guilty.

[@slavonice]

It's not a question of compassion--To Bridey, it was simply a fact that Julia knew--She over reacted, and Charles was useless as usual--He's the one who should have shown compassion--But that's the greatness of the series--They always stay in character--

[@MissMortViolette]

Ok, I forgot about that part with Bridey. Not always so sweet.

[@browncello]

@elewine718 "Forbidden love" is forbidden for a reason: it is a disordered frustration of legitimate, proper, and honest expressions of love. There can be no nobility in such so-called love just as there can be no nobility in love of things which are bad, evil, or otherwise harmless.

[@muuanmies7372]

Ryder's forbidden love is like his paintings, English charm playing the tiger

[@treasurehunteruk9718]

There seems to be gaps leaving it to the imagination. First, Charles suddenly had a wife who came from nowhere, now he is living with Julia as one of the family, as if his wife never existed. It could be a bit more continuous.

[@DarrenBonJovi]

I yearn for a time when people insulted each other by calling them 'booby'

[@ericnfan]

@holmsatlarge I wouldn't see the word programed but I do agree everything is verystraightforward. she does know her brother quite well.

[@vsatrader]

I believe that religion is a very destructive force, that has always divided us. Putting that aside, what would you do if you were Charles Ryder in this scene, bearing in mind that his real affection is Sebastian, but that Julia is closest in resemblance to Sebastian? I wonder if Waugh ever experienced this personally, as this novel is about his bohemian life at Oxford with Alastair Graham, who was a real life Sebastian. I have lived with this story most of my life, and it is one of the sadest. Bridey has no emotion or tact, but just convey's his view in black and white. I wonder who this was in Waugh's real life.

[@randomsamno9]

First time I saw this I disliked Bridey for his pomposity, re-watching it 4 years later I don't feel so harshly toward him. He didn't say it to deliberately offend, he was just being plainly honest, he simply doesn't see the truth through rose-tinted glasses.

[@harmoniabalanza]

The values of Bridey were not the values of today. I have tremendous regret over leaving my husband in my youth, seduced and hypnotized by pretty degraded cultural mores.

[@yovni]

@afreemanoneday. Well, yes, as humans we are very muddled and take on beliefs that then conflict with other beliefs, and it is all done in the name of `getting along` or survival. It`s all very unseemly, but one feels compassionate. I so appreicate how Waugh packs in the whole gamet of `faith` and its oddest manifestations and skeletons in this novel. Sometimes it may feel forced or `mechanical` but it is just how it is, and he doesn[t want to leave anything out of his study.

[@JamesBarrett23]

the "prejudices of the middle class" are what really upset the apple cart.

[@TheSmithDorian]

Except that Jesus didn't actually say "Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone' also said 'Go & sin no more' to the woman concerned". That story doesn't appear in the oldest manuscripts of gospel of John or in the oldest (3/4th Century) complete copies of the New Testament. It was added later by authors unknown.

[@BangtanNoona]

This is why they call those of us who have left the church "recovering Catholics". It is a macabre religion that supposes that at are birth we have already come into the world sinners, unclean. From there it is nothing but a guiltfest that asks one to beg forgiveness for our "sins" constantly.

[@harmoniabalanza]

I think Christianity has been massively misconstrued. Like a game of telephone, so that we are utterly away from the original true teaching.

[@JamesBarrett23]

I wonder if any of the Flytes ever bumped into Aleister Crowley on the cocktail circuit; now that would have been a party.

[@wiseonwords]

Bridey is a despicable, judgemental, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, soulless fool! I'm astonished that Charles didn't come more strongly to Julia's defence. Some men would have thrashed the living daylights out of Bridey for his insolence.

[@FarseerRK]

No! It would be like thrashing a child for not having the capacity to know when truths shouldn't be spoken. Leave bridey alone or i'll call you out :)

[@wiseonwords]

As stated, Bridey, is a despicable, self-righteous, judgemental prat, who knows nothing about the truth. Sorry to hurt your feelings, old boy!

[@TimeandMonotony]

I disagree. Like he said, it's not like it's a secret that Charles and Julia are having an affair. I believe Bridey when he says he doesn't care (after all, it's their lives), but he was being perfectly reasonable when he said his fiancee would disapprove of their setup. Whether or not you agree with his fiancee's views, I can understand him not wanting to rock the boat by bringing her there. He didn't force them into having an affair. He's not even censuring them for it. He just doesn't want to go through the hassle of his fiancee getting in a tizzy and possibly even calling off the engagement. But then, I might be biased, 'cause I like Bridey and despise Charles and Julia. He may be self-righteous, but so are C and J, and at least he's forthright about it, and not hypocritical, like they are.

[@cosmicwaderer1247]

This story is about finding happiness and then losing it. Sebastian, his marriage, julia....These are temperary states of happiness. There is only one true love God.....at least that's The story line. Sometimes, reality , cruelly wakes us up from a joyous sleep.

[@harmoniabalanza]

oh I think you're a little hard on him, given the context and history of the family.

[@browncello]

@phieq I heartily agree! That film was utter crap! A complete bastardisation and perversion of Waugh's original story.

[@orion8835]

Let's face it Waugh wrote an extraordinary novel, This work about Catholicism mixing in the upper class world of the 1920-40's England and extreme religious effects and lack of psychological and logical reason it has on almost all the characters was an amazing story. The entire book is littered with psychological profiles and disordered people, sexualities that are completely displaced and projected from one to the next. It is a brilliant treatise on the human condition of ignorance and romanticism and theology all bound up with the utter glamour of the evidence of the high dilettante period of stately homes, grand tours and noble figures. It's lesson? In many ways Waugh who himself suddenly espoused the Catholic religion in middle age was mocking the extremism and reveling in the aristocratic lifestyle he describes in upper class pre and post war occupying WW2. This scene is very, very sad as Lady Julia just lacks any ability to look towards psychology and just spews forth Biblical folklore and an awful amount of childish guilt. Charles has strong deference to her social position and just does not engage to set her on a responsible mindful path. He suddenly realizes she is obsessed with the "literalist" teachings of Christianty and is quite a nutjob. All Lady Julia's rebeling instead of dealing with the plain facts of her problems in her personal life and that of her families. Mainly that her father was a bolter who left his family to live a frivolous life abroad, that her youngest brother is a tortured closet infantile homosexual who became an alcoholic probably by at 19. This leading to her mother being devoid of any loving nature beyond the Christ messages and an utter lack of attention to again anything psychologically wanting in her family sphere. And to follow up her brother and heir being almost consistently psychopathically devoid of empathy or love and falling for a widow past childbearing years so he can too avoid sexual maturity and relations. Who is to blame for all of this chaos in the Flyte family? The current Lord Marchmain it seems. Marrying that sort of wife only ruined any sort of developmental expression being clear and any hope for truism. Lady Marchmain was just a silly fervent Catholic in a country of easy going protestants really. The combination results in this lovely creature having no idea she just married the wrong man and perhaps was drawn to Charles Ryder all along. Living in sin? Well probably just mixed up with her allegiances and what opportunities she had. I am probably not alone in wondering who made it out of this novel with the greatest success. I would imagine Cara & Lord Marchmain did. It is interesting that the oldest "sinners' of the novel were the probably happiest. Who had it the worst? Lord Sebastian. Really tragic end there. Charles probably just started painting again and wrote a book on country houses that he had set out to paint. In the end he perhaps moved to Paris and got a nice young fair skinned blondish younger boyfriend that was sober, talented, employed and out of the closet. And I forgot not a Catholic nor possessing a title.

[@fossrampant5826]

+Daniel Raphael: 'Waugh suddenly espoused the Catholic religion in middle age'. Huh? He became a Catholic in 1930, at the age of 26, after years of deliberation.

[@orion8835]

He also made fun of his conversion completely over the years and did not take it entirely seriously as evidenced in his many letters to many of his coterie (N. Mitford etc)...that is until middle age. I suppose he found Jesus.

[@fossrampant5826]

I think you'd be very hard put to find examples of him 'making fun of' his conversion to anybody, if by that you mean mocking the fact of it or treating it as something inconsequential. Writing lightly about it is a somewhat different matter. As a young man he had few Catholic friends. He did not regularly correspond with Nancy Mitford until after WWII, when she went to Paris -- he was in his early 40s by then. And all his correspondence with her, as with most of his non-Catholic friends, took an arch, comically hyperbolic tone that cast her (and them) as godless Communists (or, in the case of the Lygon sisters, as backward schoolgirls). It was intended to amuse and to tease more than to inform. He found God in his 20s, for better or for worse. (Personally, I'm not sure it was a good thing for him.)

[@orion8835]

I wouldn't believe everything that is presented about Evelyn...he was very capricious and completely climbing. He was also very tortured sexually and very cynical about showing people who he really was. He was very successful in his writings and really that still is of use for the rest of us in enjoying his literature. As far as his pious persona well...he was rather creative and whimsical a person. Most authors are creative when it comes to reality of their own selves.

[@fossrampant5826]

+ Daniel Raphael I don't believe everything that is presented about Waugh. Of course I'm familiar with the standard biographies, but in addition to repeated readings of his novels (not to mention travel books and collected journalism), I've also read his diaries and his collected correspondence through several times -- not what 'is presented about' Waugh, but the record he left behind of himself. In any case, my comments were limited to accuracy about the timing and seriousness of his conversion to Catholicism.

[@vitaminK1121]

@elewine718 Jesus also told the infamous woman at the well (who had had five husbands, not including the one with whom she was living) what Bridey told Julia and Charles and what they found so offensive - the truth. Ppl generally don't like the light shone on their wrongdoings. They'd much prefer to rationalize them away and go on blissfully deceiving themselves. Bridey and Beryl were the voice of Jesus. "Go & sin no more," Jesus later instructed her (implied in Bridey's non-judgemental tone).

[@DeepScreenAnalysis]

I loathe Charles, going about brideshead like he owns the place.