Withnail & I (1987)
Directed by Bruce Robinson

Film Review

What a fun, vibrant, colour-saturated decade the 1960s were, if you believe the popular myths.  Not so, according to Bruce Robinson, who offers a completely different vision of Swinging Sixties Britain, one that resembles a Constable landscape that has been left out in the rain too long and mistaken for a latrine by every passing pigeon.  Withnail & I is an adaptation of a novel that Robinson hammered out in a state of near despair in 1969 and subsequently failed to find a publisher for.  It is a small miracle that it was ever made into a film, so offbeat and unsettlingly weird is its conflation of social commentary, buddy movie and blacker-than-tar comedy.  With George Harrison's company stumping up most of the finance, Withnail & I somehow managed to get made and has justifiably earned its reputation as one of the all-time classics of British film comedy.

Drawing heavily on his own far-from-pleasant experiences as a drama student struggling to hold body and soul together at the same time that the Americans were burning up mountains of cash to send a man to the moon, Bruce Robinson paints a distinctive portrait of 1960s Britain that is almost surreal in its dung-caked grimness and pessimism.  A mildew-stench of moral decay and futility infects every frame of the film, which has as much to say about the 1980s as it does about the decade in which it is supposedly set.  At the time Withnail & I was made, Britain was a divided nation, with whole swathes of the country blighted by the ruthless free-market policies of the Thatcher government.  A long and bitter recession was just around the corner, but already a sense of hopelessness was in the air, felt most keenly by those living on the margins, the supposed riff-raff for whom that indomitable beacon of capitalism, Mrs Thatcher, had no time.  It was not a good time to be young and coming onto the jobs market.  It was not a good time to be a single mum, chronically disabled, an old age pensioner or a coal miner.  Few films made in the 1980s evoke this sense of a Britain divided by class, age and moral outlook more powerfully than Withnail & I, particularly its now legendary tea-shop sequence, a small masterpiece of social satire.  Bruce Robinson followed this up with another anti-Thatcherite diatribe, How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), but this had nothing like the impact and razor-sharp acuity of Withnail & I, by far the finest thing he has created.

The casting of Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant for the two lead roles was daring but inspired, launching both actors on their highly successful screen careers.  McGann had recently come to prominence through his work on the prestigious television drama The Monocled Mutineer;  Grant was a complete unknown at the time.  The chalk-and-cheese contrast of the pragmatic working class lad (McGann) and florid public school rake (Grant) makes for some memorable character interaction and sublime deadbeat comedy, and the film could easily have functioned as a two-hander if Robinson had wished it.  Richard Griffiths livens things up just as the humour begins to flag in the final act, playing a character who was based on the director Franco Zeffirelli (who attempted to seduce Robinson after giving him a part in his 1968 film Romeo and Juliet).  Griffiths' career also enjoyed a considerable boost via this film; he subsequently acquired the status of a national treasure through his regular appearances in the popular BBC television series Pie in the Sky.

Great actors certainly help to make a great film but what makes Withnail & I so special is Robinson's scintillating screenplay, which positively sizzles with quotable one-liners.  These range from Withnail's "I want something's flesh!" and "Don't threaten me with a dead fish!" to Monty's famous chat-up line: "Are you a sponge or a stone?"  The central character's voiceover narration has its own unique poetry, as expressive, observant and pungent as anything to be found in a work of modern literature. "We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.  Making an enemy of our own future..."  No need to pollute you body with illegal narcotics and dubious alternatives to alcohol - you can get high just as easily by shutting your eyes and imbibing the mesmerising soundtrack of Withnail & I.

A strange modern fable with an opaque moral, this is a film whose dark humour seeps into your consciousness like a slow-acting poison creeping through your veins, reminding us of the value of friendship and the necessity to face the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.  Like a fine wine, Withnail & I has improved with age and just seems to get better the more times you watch it.  Steeped in genius, is it any wonder that it should be as blisteringly relevant today as it was in the late 1980s?  If anything, the film's satirical teeth feel even sharper, its bitter melange of pathos and cynicism even more eloquent an expression of the deep-seated divisions and injustices that still poison our society, Thatcher's most enduring legacy.  Nothing brings home the horrible reality that surrounds us more effectively than well-judged comedy, and Withnail & I does just that, with merciless aplomb.

Film Synopsis

Marwood and Withnail are two unemployed young actors who eke out a squalid existence in London in the late 1960s.  Unable to find work, their most pressing concern is to avoid starvation and freezing to death in their grimy, rat-infested Camden Town flat.  When Withnail's gay Uncle Monty offers them the use of his cottage in the Lake District the duo hastily head off to the country, eagerly anticipating a relaxing rural break.  Their holiday soon turns into a nightmare as they come up against the grim realities of country life - rampant bulls, psychopathic poachers, unfriendly farmers, and chickens that are a bugger to kill.  By day they go hunting for fish with a rifle, by night they fend off the near-Arctic cold by burning furniture.  Just when it couldn't possibly get any worse, Monty turns up unannounced and starts pursuing Marwood like a love-starved virgin, convinced he is a closet homosexual...