Cinematic Perfection
Withnail And I is a film (forgive me if you know all of this, and actually you should), set at the end of the 1960’s about two out of work actors who go on holiday to the Lake District. Written by Bruce Robinson and featuring Richard E Grant as Withnail and Paul McGann as ‘I’, referred to as Marwood in the script but never named on screen.
It’s no understatement to say that if you like this film, you fall in love with it forever. Robinson wrote a masterful story, where very little actually happens, yet lives shift, fortunes change and drama of Shakespearean scale takes place in the lounge and pub. What makes it infinitely rewatchable is the pitch perfect dialogue, every single line is quotable, every scene perfectly acted.
Richard E Grant as Withnail, Paul McGann as Marwood and Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty
Melancholy Writ Large
As black comedies go, Withnail And I plots a dismal and divergent course for the protagonists. Two struggling actors surviving on the dole in a crumbling London flat, driven mad by alcohol, drugs and the miserable state of the country on the cusp of a new decade. After railing against the misery of London, having a fall-out with their dealer and realising that their careers are non-existent, they make a desperate attempt to recharge by escaping to the country for a weekend. They blag a stay in Withnails Uncles cottage in the Lake District, then they have a shit drive up there, cook a chicken and go to the pub. Uncle Monty arrives under the false assumption that Marwood is a ripe young fruit. They have a run in with a poacher, who is actually fairly decent. They then fuck off back to London as Marwood gets a real job and Withnail is left alone. That’s basically it, nothing incredible happens. Yet the film hits so many relatable emotional beats in a very English way that it has become an enduring cult classic.
Bloody Students
When released in the cinema the film wan’t a hit, hampered by a limited budget for adertising it didn’t get much word of mouth. It only really took off when released on video and was taken to heart by students. Student life revolves around alcohol, drugs, squalor and misery (well mine did) so Withnail and I was, and still is, the perfect companion. Thers’s a notorious drinking game where you match drink-for-drink the horrific mixture of drinks that are imbibed in the film, which includes lighter fluid (though this is generally substituted with vinegar, christ knows why.
Those students grew up and became normal human beings, yet they still held Withnail And I to their hearts. For beyond the squalor the film is also an affecting tale of moving on in life and leaving places and people behind.
Uncle Monty
Most of the people in the film are pretty mean and nasty to each other, Withnal in particular is a vain and venal character who rarely sees beyond his own needs. However the one character who has an (admittedly rather warped) ounce of compassion is the towering figure of Uncle Monty, played by the brilliant late Richard Griffiths.
The film has been accused of out of date attitudes to sexuality, women and race. Which is a fair reflection of how bad things were in 1969. There are no women in it, but then the world that Withnail and Marwood inhabited was not one that any women would be a part of, the chances of them finding romance in their present situation was a big fat zero. Then there is Marwoods fear of being buggered by Uncle Monty, but then withnail has set him up by telling Monty that Marwood is an active homosexual, in his bid to get him to allow them to use his cottage in the Lakes, yet further proof of Withnails duplicity. I won’t recount the resolution, but Monty, at heart, proves to be a romantic soul.
I think that lunch with Uncle Monty would be rather entertaining.
Here, Hare, Here
Nichael Elphick played the character Jake the Poacher, who the boys come across in The Crow and inevitably offend. He refuses to give them any of his haul (eels down his trousers and pheasants under his overcoat), and instead threatens to ‘come and see them’. They are convinced he’s out to murder them, in fact all he does is to drop them round a hare for their pot, with a scrawled note saying ‘here, hare, here’. Monty reads this out, and Griffiths delivers these three simple words in such a delicious way that it demands to be quoted high and low.
There are interesting themes that the film plays with throughout, the end of friendships, moving on from stagnant situations, the end of the 60s, but there is one that not many pick up on, The hilarious consequences of the friction between town and country. The distrust of townies by the rural population is nothing new, and Withnail and I shows it to be well founded. From Marwood’s expectation that everything would be like an HE Bates novel, to them blundering through the countryside leaving gates open and scrounging wood and a chicken from the farmer, they never rise above being clueless.
