Withnail and I

It is sometimes unclear exactly what a film like Withnail and I is trying to achieve or trying to extract from its audience. Usually we regard films as being in certain categories, such as those that make us laugh, devastate us with tragedy or allow us to lose ourselves in unfolding plots or special effects. In this way Withnail and I is largely a different animal, because it seems to transcend any of our collective ideas about what should make an enjoyable film. It is a film that some would say is too depressing, the humour too random and off kilter, yet Withnail and I has gone on to become one of the most adored cult films of all time. The reason being that it is brilliant in the way it is able to perfectly capture a moment in time and the eccentric yet unextraordinary character s that share in its gloom.

The exact moment in time is 1969, the end of the sixties fast approaching, as two out of work actors share in an existence of becoming horrendously drunk, and then stumbling through the squalor of their Camden flat until the local pub opens and they are able to get similarly drunk all over again. The Withnail of the title (played to perfection by Richard E Grant) is an over theatrical, drunken, gloomy character, utterly hilarious in his child like petulance. ‘I’ or Marwood, as has been discovered through a glimpse of a letter, is perhaps the more sober and dependable of the two, often acting as that little voice that exists in all of our heads letting us know when we’ve become ridiculous in our excess. The plot of director Bruce Robinson’s debut film is deceptively simple as our two unconventional heroes decide they’ve had enough of London and want to get out into the country to ‘revitalise.’ In doing so they haul up in the dilapidated cottage of Withnail’s uncle and everything seems to go wrong, to hilarious effect. The trouble they encounter involves wild bulls, a disagreeable poacher and an unnerving run in with said uncle, the homosexual  Monty, a likeable character who completely misjudges  Marwood’s own intentions.

Withnail and I is utterly brilliant for reasons that are probably too long to list. For one, Bruce Robinson’s dialogue is some of the wittiest and most inventive that I have ever come across. He is the only director outside Tarantino to make a conversation between two people, no matter how mundane, completely gripping and fascinating. A strength that is a massive gift the film has seeing as it is mainly preoccupied with funny and idiosyncratic conversations between characters.  The often inebriated Danny, who serves as drug dealer and confidante to the characters of the title gives us some of the best moments in dialogue, one such gem being when he advises Withnail not to get a haircut because ‘hair are your aerials, they pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain’ the sort of drunken declaration we are all familiar with making which is exactly why lines like this seem to resonate much more than they should.

This film is able to avoid the realm of the farcical, despite how bizarre the humour can be, because the characters are created in such a way that they are utterly human, truthful and unpretentious as they are flawed. Even characters such as Uncle Monty are saved from being ludicrous because they never lose their fragility and we never forget how vulnerable they are to being hurt. 

Despite how funny the film is, I never fail to be moved by its melancholic ending and the atmosphere of gloom and uncertainty that permeate its quieter moments. It is at these points, and after Danny’s last speech at the end, that we realise the film deals in death. The death of the sixties, emphasised in a soundtrack comprised mainly Of Jimi Hendrix- who would of course die the next year-including the classic ‘All along the watch tower’. A song which, to me, serves as the biggest atmosphere builder the film pocesses. It is also about the death of a friendship, an era in every sense, as the ending of the film sees Marwood leaving to pursue a part in a play, leaving Withnail alone in the rain to give the greatest performance of his uneventful career that only the wolves will witness.  Because Withnail has been portrayed with an abundance of humanity, we feel for him and worry about his eventual fate.  The ending gains extra poignancy in the fact that Bruce Robinson based Withnail on his own dear friend Vivian Mackerrell, who eventually died prematurely of throat cancer after years of hardened drinking.  However, like most of us who have chosen to take an opportunity that may improve our lives and expand our prospects for the future, we don’t judge Marwood for leaving his friend to his chosen fate because, as Danny says ‘the greatest era in the history of man kind is over.’ The balloon is rising, and you can either let go before it’s too late, or cling on to the rope for as long as you can. As the credits roll, we find ourselves questioning how much longer Withnail can cling on to his own safe darkness before he becomes his own casualty.

It is this unflinching portrayal of undesirable normality that has made this film speak to so many people and transcends it to extraordinary, cult viewing.