WITHNAIL AND I @ 35

Two "resting" actors, Withnail and the unnamed Marwood, are slipping down the drain at the end of the '60s in London. Marwood, working class and worried, panics about how he can't handle his flatmate's caprices and just needs to start his acting career. He resolves to confront the aristocratic monster but is once again charmed by him and the pair of them fall into the familiar delusional drain of mutually supportive balderdash. They don't have careers because they haven't got out of the swinging sixties blur, fronted up to auditions, nibbled on some humble pie and made a start.

But who wants to hear that? They are all out of wine and must do something to keep the fuse burning.

Withnail responds to Marwood's pleas to make a temporary exit through the toff's uncle Monty's country house for a bucolic regroup before a massive assault on the profession with rejuvenated vigour. All that happens but it is the expected disaster as the two city boys can make nothing but unintentional comedy of their efforts to go from day to day. When Monty turns up to claim his prize from a lie slipped quietly to him by Withnail, everything has to change. And so it does, more drastically than either intended.

Bruce Robinson's autobiographical swipe at the self delusion of bohemia and its self-annihilating force deceives more than once. We are presented with a pair of alcoholics whose naivete is meant to seduce us and then we are meant to be disgusted by the heavily othered Monty when his predation of Marwood disgusts us. But there's something wrong with this reading. It doesn't work.

All of the elements are there on screen for the contemporary viewer to find distasteful. I won't dispute a moment of that. But to feel attacked by these things is to ignore the disarming writing and committed performances of a small group of players who, having introduced a boomerish alienation to the proceedings, proceed to thwack at the worst of prejudice with an industrial axe. 

I'll admit that I was feeling uncomfortable while watching but I'll also admit that it took no reverse telescope to right the apparent blunders of an old screenplay which was already treading an anachronistic tightrope. The comedy and disgust at the centre of Monty's aggressive approach to Marwood is the result of Withnail's myopic scheming. Monty is more played than playing (there's even a card game on screen to reinforce that) and we might well be surprised to find ourselves feeling sorry for his being duped. But the weird thing is that we forgive the narcissistic pile of self assertion and entitlement that is Withnail if for no better reason than he never quite means ill because he never quite means.

For all the goofy drunkenness gags in the opening scenes we do see Withnail's vulnerability, his screaming desperation and his delusion. We walk beside him as he staggers from one outrageously absurd claim to the unsteady next because we love him. And, sod it, he's funny. And when he sucks all that down to a placid face to express his disappointment and congratulations that Marwood has won a good break, we know he's better than all of the other hacking bastards who have crawled over each others' backs to get a bit part in an offseason Shakespeare. Blowhard, yes, but one who can paraphrase Wilde's claim that he has applied his talent to his hustle but his genius to cadging a drink. And when we see him wail Hamlet's lines about the quintessence of dust to the hyenas in the park and then just turn and walk back home in the rain, we know he'll find something to do and say. It's not a comfortable realisation but it's solid and it keeps the story working even as the credits roll.

I saw this at the Kino in late 1987, as a dunk bohemian Fitzroyal along with a few others of the same ilk. We headed straight for the bar afterwards, armed with its quips and the infectious comedy of its scenes. We celebrated Marwood's success but were far more interested in following Withnail back to his digs. None of us had had to make Marwood's choice and met it the same way as his dissolute friend. None of us expected we would have to. The genius of this film, if there is one, is that it is aware that each one of its viewers knows this. And genius is how it still plays.