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. 

Review: THE RUM DIARY: ugly Americana in paradise

Phil Kemp, a lost writer, travels to Puerto Rico in 1960 to find his voice through some solid hack work on a local paper. He soaks up local colour, is courted by big and dodgy money to soap up a crooked land deal, falls in love with the bad guy's girl and observes his world with dry accuracy. And then it ends.

Bruce Robinson, whose Withnail and I is justly celebrated for its comedy with conscience, has assembled promise on a plate for this film. Johnny Depp intriguingly plays the younger version of a character he played as an older man when he, Depp, was younger (the bastard hasn't aged an hour since 1998!) Michael Rispoli transcends his gangster stereotype effortlessly in the role of the Virgil-like Sala. Aaron Eckhart is perfectly cast as the bad guy in chief, ugly American as earthly Apollo. Giovanni Ribisi plays an eccentric whacko with none of the self-defeating directionlessness that Jeremy Davies has wasted his career pursuing. Robinson's cover version of Hunter S. Thompson's alien with a thesaurus style is note perfect. So, why is The Rum Diary so .... ordinary?

Well, to say it's too long is really to say that it continue with the smart comedy it hints at from the opening shot of a light plane dragging a sky banner welcoming Union Carbide to Puerto Rico. And even if the comedy spills from rather than tightens the film it is welcome when it does appear. And if the ugly American subplot is trowelled on it is at least performed with some elegance and study by Eckhart and co and if they are stereotypes they aren't too far here from their literary origins. You get the idea, no single element stands up and takes the helm when either of those threads would work well supported by the other.

Support really is the problem here. Withnail and I works so well because all of its uproarious comedy stems from the solid living trunk of its theme of knowing when to exit youth, stage left. It works so well that said theme isn't evident until the end when it becomes quietly impossible to ignore. Rum Diary's proposal that it takes a shock to find your conscience and so your voice is a fine one but the bricks of adversity hurled at Kemp's head are so chunky and heavy that there is really no danger that he will make the decision we all know he will make.

This is why The Rum Diary feels like it's going to be too long about halfway through. Take the proverbial half hour from this two hour piece and you'll have a tight feature film but you'll also have a flatter one that hits its marks and speaks its lines and then ends. You'd kill the style and voice of Robinson himself but it is the inability of that voice to bring the herd in that makes it so frustrating. Almost every thread is allowed to fray and waste.

That's it. That's what I think about this film: it's a waste. It fails pretty much everything it tries. Rather than put it next to Withnail on the shelf I think it would be more comfortable next to Men Who Stare at Goats or I Love You Phillip Morris. The worst I can say of this, though, is that it isn't even a disappointment. Anyone who has seen the film Robinson made just after Withnail, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, cannot be surprised at the misses of this one and perhaps be kinder on Bruce Robinson for bringing us a single genuine immortal classic. That's still more than 90% of people who make movies can claim.

Here I'll point out that the following is the sole mention of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.