The
lowdown: 'Withnail & I' tells the story of two friends who
are unemployed actors living in London in 1969. Richard
E Grant plays Withnail and
Paul McGann plays Marwood (although he is credited only as "I" in the closing
credits).
They spend a lot of their
time drinking alcohol, taking drugs and hoping their agents will call them
about an acting job.
They eventually decide to
leave London for a holiday in the country, and head off to the Lake District
to stay at a cottage
owned by Withnail's rich
and lecherous Uncle Monty (wonderfully played by Richard Griffiths).
The two struggling actors
soon find that country life is not what they expected - the cottage has
no heating, they have
no food, Marwood encounters
a randy bull, and they come to believe that a poacher is out to get them.
Monty eventually
comes to stay with them,
and starts making amorous advances to Marwood, who turns him down. So it
is back to London,
where Marwood is finally
offered an acting role. The final scenes see Marwood transformed - gone
is the long hair and
unshaven look, replaced
by a respectable haircut and neat clothing. He is moving out of the squalid
flat and moving on with
his life, while Withnail
is still unemployed and drinking alcohol at all hours of the day, and content
to keep going on as he
has been.
'Withnail & I' is a simple
film on the surface, but it has hidden depths and allegories which are
often not obvious on the
first viewing. Above all,
it is a film about change and transition - the drugs and alcohol era of
the 1960s is coming to an end,
as is the friendship of
the two lead characters. This is a great film and has rightly become a
cult classic. The performances
of Richard E Grant (in his
first film role) and Paul McGann are superb, and despite being made in
1987 it has not dated that
much (probably because it
is supposed to be set in another era).
Trivia:
McGann's character is never referred to by name as Marwood in the film,
although he receives a letter addressed to
'Marwood', and his character
is named 'Marwood' in the script.
Quotes:
Withnail:
I must have some booze. I demand to have some booze.
Withnail: We
want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want
them
here, and we want them now. |
Video
Clips:
In
the pub (4.4mb)
Hitting
the road (5.4mb)
A
randy bull (3.6mb)
The
poacher (5.2mb) |
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