Withnail and I

Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I (1987) is a film where 1960s British unemployed actors never demonstrate the slightest act of ambition, instead preferring to scam their way into drink and housing and slumming. This is not a film to be observed for its narrative, though. The narrative is really just fodder for bemused observations, glorious quotes (“I demand booze” and “How do we make it die?” among others), creative changes of heart, beautiful imagery, and a road trip that is thoroughly entertaining.

The house where Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann) live before their prolonged journey to the countryside is a cankerous clutter, buried under mounds of trash, and the humor of the film largely derives from Withnail’s ability to push headlong into certain disaster with full contentment, no matter the travesties that are just behind him. Withnail’s gay uncle, Monty, who has supplied them the countryside house, has been promised a night with Marwood by Withnail in compensation for the slumming, and the conniving treachery with which Withnail mediates his life is headed a collision with the long-suffering Marwood.

This being the first Bruce Robinson film I’ve seen, though having heard good things about this film for about a year now, I was interested in how the film balanced the decadence of the 60s era together with the obsolescence that faces everything that Withnail and Marwood have always stood for. Interesting, despite the copious humor of the film, the film actually acts as an elegy for past friendships, for the failure of generations to grow with the times. Yet all of Withnail’s treachery and anachronisms are observed with a melancholy eye, so that Marwood understands that these times, despite his having to dodge the enamored gaze of Monty, are rooted in joyousness.

Withnail and I’s balance between tragedy and uproarious laughter, then, becomes a complicated affair, since an over-reliance on either tendency damns the whole film to mediocrity. The writing and performances, especially Grant’s performance, though, are masterful, and the film achieves a peculiar sensibility of mourning when Withnail and Marwood bid farewell. The bitter heart of Withnail seems unlikely to find reconciliation after Marwood’s exit, and Withnail is such an offensive but intriguing pathology that we want to discover new or lost adventures to be lost with him.

Withnail and I: 10/10