Withnail on the hill
With this being my fourth lap around the blindspot circuit, I have come to understand certain tendencies to the course. Every film comes with expectations, so it’s on me to get beyond those expectations. It’s not my mission to decide whether or not a film is good, but instead what about it surprises, what it evokes, what about it endures, and how it all transcends its stigma. Essentially, each experience just needs to be considered for how it plays…not how it’s supposed to play.

So if it doesn’t play to thunderous applause, so be it.

WITHNAIL & I is about a curious friendship between two flatmates. The pair are broke, slobs, educated-but-underachieving, and generally not contributing to society. After a series of mishaps including possible eviction, general slovenliness, and narrowly avoiding assault, the two flee their London habitat for a weekend away at the country cottage of Withnail’s uncle Monty.

It’s there that things go from odd to downright absurd. The boys seemed poised to starve, and poised to continually be stuck in the mud thanks to the plastic bags on their feet in lieu of rubber boots. Happily, Uncle Monty arrives, and offers to look after them…but even his kind hand seems to come with a pocketful of oddities.

Clearly, Withnail and Marwood (the titular “I”) don’t belong in London or the country…begging the question, just where do they belong?

 

Withnail & I
As I tried to make heads or tails of WITHNAIL & I, I was reminded of the odd friendships I’ve had through the years. You’ve probably had them too; the ones that begin innocently enough, and often by way of proximity. the first thing you know, you’re being cordial with the person at the next desk, the next thing you know you’re taking lunch at the same time. Eventually, you find yourselves hanging out more and more, until one of you realizes the other isn;t the sort of person you thought…but by then it’s too late.

How do we back away gently? How do we find the excuse not to take the same bus or break at the same time we usually do? Better yet, how do we handle it if we are the ones being jilted? I gotta believe that’s the story behind Withnail and Marwood. One day they started talking, the next they were bosom buddies. By the time Marwood figured out Withnail was a nutter, it was too late to start making excuses about catching an earlier train.

Or maybe they were actually made for one another. Perhaps there is no yin and no yang to this pairing, but instead a pair of yins who don’t know how to tell the other how to yang. or maybe they do and just don’t want to bring it up. It calls to mind a joke I once heard about a masochist who met a sadist, and when the former said “Hurt me”, the latter replied “No”.

 

Cool Your Jets

 

While the friendship of Marwood and Withnail brought to mind some of my more curious interactions in the past, I struggled to connect with much else about this film. As I watched this curious weekend at the cottage play out, I found that the events were odd, but not quite odd enough. You know how before a tee-shirt can be considered vintage, it must first be considered out-of-style? That’s where I found WITHNAIL & I. It was odd, but not quite odd enough. It didn’t carry the dark edge of TRAINSPOTTING, nor the mod chic of BLOW UP. It encapsulated a restlessness I’ve never felt, an entitlement I’ve never subscribed to, and a disposition I’ve never held.

Not that such things are essential to enjoying a film, of course. I’m not a suicidal lad fascinated by an older woman either, but that didn’t stop me from falling head-over-heels for HAROLD AND MAUDE earlier this year.

I suppose my point is that besides the general oddity and occasional wry wit, this movie didn’t give me much to sink my teeth into. Few sequences will burrow into my memory…few photographic images will burn into my retinas. This was a film about a time and a feeling, but it’s a time I didn’t experience, and a feeling I’ve never felt.

 

Uncle Monty
When it comes down to it, I feel like my mild apathy towards WITHNAIL & I is because I’m not something enough. Perhaps I’m not old enough…not British enough…not smart enough…not hard enough done-by…not well enough read. There’s something inherent in this film’s DNA that is not in mine, and because of that, the cult chord that it struck for so many wasn’t struck for me. I didn’t dislike the film – not by a longshot – but I don’t feel as though I’ve been living a deeply sheltered existence for not seeing it before now.

That’s been the biggest advantage of this series – filling in the gaps of my film literacy and understanding how some of these artistic and cultural building blocks laid the foundation for the structures I love. I don’t see that in WITHNAIL. I don’t feel enriched or enlightened. Up until now it’s a film that has only been known to me by title, and now it will likely fade back into that.

But maybe I missed something. Maybe someone like Anna, Nick, or Steven can tell me what the film did for them, and I can use that to reconsider what I experienced.

In the meantime, I’m off to drink some red wine and listen to The Clash. Oh wait – maybe I was influenced by the film after all!

 

BSS

I usually post Blind Spot entries on the final Tuesday of every month. If you are participating, drop me an email (ryanatthematineedotca) when your post is up and I’ll make sure to link to your entry.
Here’s the round-up for May so far…

 

Becca Sharp watched Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN

Nikhat Zahra watched…well…a bunch of films

Josh watched THE MIRROR

Jenna & Allie watched MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO

Courtney Small watched MY DINNER WITH ANDRE

Keisha watched THE GREAT ESCAPE

Dan watched IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT

Dell watched SUPERMAN II

Jordan watched GALLIPOLI

Anna watched SHAME

Ruth watched BREATHLESS

Katy Rochelle watched THIS IS SPINAL TAAP

John Hitchcock watched THE KILLING

Mette Kowalski watched THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)

Natasha watched THE GODFATHER 2

Jay Cluitt watched INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)

Chris watched ANDREI RUBLEV

James watched TROIS COULEURS: ROUGE

Brittani watched PRIMAL FEAR

Sean Kelly watched THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Kevin watched 12 ANGRY MEN

Paskalis watched BOOGIE NIGHTS

Hunter watched THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE

Zöe watched TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Steven watched CHARULATA

Ryan watched THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

18 Replies to “Blindsided by WITHNAIL & I”

  1. Booo! Shame you didn’t like it! I think, like some wine, it is an acquired taste. Having said that, let it sink in. Richard E. Grant is something magnificent here and, in time, surely the quotes will last a little longer:

    Deliver these in a stiff, Brit-thespian manner:

    “I demand to have some booze!”

    “We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!”

    “Black puddings are no good to us. I want something’s flesh!”

    and my personal favourite, mid hangover the day after…

    “I feel like a pig shat in my head.” seems to often summarise those feelings.

    (and before you say “but you’re british so you get it…!”, I’m not British – I’m Irish!)

  2. Aww. To be fair, I didn’t like it that much when I first saw it either. But it was for exactly the opposite reasons. I hadn’t watched anything like it, I had nothing to compare it too, and in a way it’s neither happy nor bleak enough for the whole thing to make the kind of impact films usually that unique do. BUT then I rewatched it. Again, I don’t know if it will happen the same way for you because I do think I was more grown up and more understanding when I saw it again and I totally adored it then. I thought it was something genius.

    And LOL @ my links. Well, I deserved that. Going to try and be on time this time 🙂

    1. That feeling you had with digging W&I more and more with prolonged exposure is one I’ve felt several times in the past (Hence the “Watch it Again” mantra I’ve championed almost since the moment this site launched). So I will come back to it sometime.

      I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t find it to be “all that and a bag of chips”.

  3. I couldn’t take this film. Ten minutes it and I actually turned this off…and I never do that with movies, no matter how much I dislike them. I just couldn’t.

  4. You’re definitely not British enough. I was made to watch this film for an exam when I was 16… and then again when I re-sat the exam… And then again… That was too many times. I appreciated it but it’s not one I can watch over and over, although it’s consistently voted a top british comedy! I just love Richard E. Grant though.

    Interestingly, the village of Shap where the film is set is in my home county (which outside of Miss Potter and one or two others is a rare occurrence), and I know of some people who one day decided to drive up there, find the cottage the men lived in (which they did, it’s completely abandoned!) and they opened the oven to find the brick was still inside, they didn’t want to take it so it should still be there.

    1. I vote one day you do a photo or video post taking us around the village. I bet it would go over like gangbusters!

      What sort of class has an exam that focuses on WITHNAIL & I (I imagine the answer is a film studies class, but I’m hoping for a more interesting answer).

      And know what’s funny? Years ago, I actually read Grant’s memoir – you’d think that would have me more predisposed to enjoying this movie!

      Alas.

  6. Your “not something enough” paragraph perfectly describes how I felt after I watched this the first time. Something was missing for me, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. Ebert’s review helped things click a little bit, as did subsequent viewings. I totally get where you’re coming from here, but I also agree with Simon and Nik that this flick is acquired taste that gets a little better every time.

    1. Thanks for the reminder – I should go dig up some reviews of this piece now that my own post is written. That’s the side effect of writing about film I hadn’t counted on…the amount of reading of other posts I do went down for fear of copying someone else’s thoughts.

      As mentioned, I’ll come back to WITHNAIL sometime, when I’m “more” something.

    1. Pretty much. I’ve been on a very lucky run with my blindspot selections – it was only a matter of time before one missed the mark on a personal levell.

  8. It’s one of those ‘British’ films that ended up with a cult following and no one actually knows why, even the writer doesn’t know. I waited years to see it, having seen countless clips, reviews, articles, my friend ended up giving me the DVD as a present so I was forced to watch it. I pretended I loved it as she was always quoting lines to me and just smiled and ‘oh yes, hahah’. It wasn’t for me. I think it was one of those film where I waited too long and the hype became the film instead. Also, I completely get the relationship where you’re friends and then its too late. It’s like that at work now with someone, but I think they get it now, thank gad.

    1. Question for you Miss Hoagan: Is part of why this film didn’t land for you is that it’s too (for lack of a better term) “Loser Bloke-centric”?, which is to say that if you *wanted* to spend time soaking up the follies of two lads who can’t get their shit together…

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