‘We’ve gone on holiday by mistake…’
Along with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and to a slightly lesser extent Fight Club, Withnail and I was a foundational text for me as an adolescent in terms of discovering a counter-culture – a sub-society that operates outside of the boundaries and limits of ‘normal’ life. Once you get older, the weight of meaning perhaps dissipates from those first moments of teenage rebellion and while I have seen Withnail… many times, this particular viewing was my first in over 15 years. What I’d forgotten, or perhaps not realised the first time around, is just how dark and poignant and insistent it can be…
Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and his unnamed companion (Paul McGann) are two out-of-work actors in London at the tail end of the swinging sixties. Despite Withnail’s flamboyant and loquacious mannerisms and the narrator’s literary pretensions, both men are living a life of degradation and squalor. When one particular booze and drug-fuelled bender gets out of control, the two men decide to escape to the English countryside for a few days and so they enlist the help of Withnail’s eccentric benefactor, Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), who owns a cottage in rural Penrith and volunteers to assist them in their quest for equilibrium.
I was surprised, on this most recent viewing, with just how similar Withnail… is to Fear and Loathing… Both films follow two unhinged men on a dark and introspective journey into the heart of hedonism and addiction; both films take place in the same era and deal with the same themes of disillusionment and the need for belonging; both films conclude with – what feels like – the end of the hippy era in London and San Francisco. They even both share artwork designed by regular Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Ralph Steadman. Where they differ is a simple matter of geography. Withnail… is a quintessentially British film, with its fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, quaint countryside tea rooms and intense repression while Fear and Loathing… is quintessentially American, as evidenced by its bright lights and sunlit diners, its garish embrace of consumerism and its ultimate distortion of the American Dream. What am I waffling on about here? Who knows. The bottom line is they are both fantastic films—two sides of the same warped and grotesque coin.
Let’s talk Withnail… (finally). Writer-director Bruce Robinson based the script on his own experiences and this results in a film that feels authentic despite its cartoonish characters. It was a cartoonish era, I suppose. Either way, along with The Big Lebowski, it is a masterclass in how to write comedic dialogue. ‘Endlessly quotable’ is the kind of trite, easily regurgitated nonsense you will find in countless lazily written reviews (many of them on this very website) but with this film, the phrase really does apply. You could genuinely find thirty one-liners here that are better than the best gags in 90% of comedies released in any era. Grant, in his breakthrough role, is utterly spellbinding, a man destined to be a star, all bulging eyes and sinewy arms and the long face of a particularly theatrical horse that has indeed ventured into the arena of the unwell. But his performance wouldn’t work if it were not complimented so beautifully by McGann’s sweet-natured and vulnerable turn as the second lead. The two of them together are explosive. A word too for Griffiths who ensures that Uncle Monty will go down as one of the most wonderfully preposterous comedic characters ever to grace the silver screen. I can’t decide if I want to drink port with the man or have him dropped into the sea. No notes.
Withnail and I is a masterpiece. Of that, there is no doubt. The performances, the script, the incessant rainfall… it’s all so British. So beautiful. So ugly. All human life is here. Drink it in. Then eat a pork pie. An afternoon spent in the company of this film is an afternoon spent in the company of greatness.
