There are many films that are worth revisiting because the experience of watching them is one that changes very little over the years. Others however may reward a rewatch precisely because the meaning of them can in fact shift and grow over time.
Withnail and I is one such example of a film that does this for me. A black comedy film released in 1987, it was based on writer and director Bruce Robinson’s memories of his own experiences during the 1960s and, like Monty Python’s Life of Brian, was partially funded by George Harrison of The Beatles for no other reason than he wanted to see it. Though initially performing poorly upon release, it soon gained cult status in the years after and proved to be career-defining for each of its leads.
Set in 1969, it offers quite a different side to the sixties than we often see, contrasting heavily with the popular image of the decade that had already become prevalent by the late eighties. Whilst one character talks about the end of “the greatest decade in the history of mankind,” the promise of that era has largely failed to be delivered upon. The sixties here consist less of hippies, psychedelia and free love, and more of greasy diners, damp and drunken violence, with England portrayed as a wet, grey country, “shat upon by Tories, and shovelled up by Labour.”
The film follows two struggling, out-of-work actors; the selfish, sardonic, hard-drinking Withnail (played brilliantly by a genuinely ill-looking Richard E. Grant) and the more sensitive, poetic Marwood (the eponymous ‘I’, who is unnamed onscreen, played by Paul McGann) – both living together in absolute squalor and between them consuming vast quantities of alcohol. Fleeing their surroundings in Soho, the two seek refuge in the countryside, in a ramshackle cottage in the Lake District, where they have to contend with antagonistic locals, lashing rain and the unwanted attentions of Withnail’s eccentric uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), himself a failed actor and closeted homosexual.
The film represents one of the very best British comedies of the period, with dialogue that is endlessly quotable, to the point where I could be here all day listing all the lines that have since become iconic among fans; from the scene where Withnail demands “the finest wines available to humanity” in a local tearooms, to Monty relating how, as a child he “used to weep in butchers shops.”
It was a film I discovered as a student, and in many ways, its witty barbs, and its depictions of drunken debauchery and general aimlessness make it feel like the emblematic student film, perfect for casual viewings over drinks. But whilst it’s largely on this basis that most fans will first come to it, Withnail and I is also a film that’s much deeper and more sombre than it might at first glance appear.
There are some obvious moments that stick out as being far darker than one might expect from a film like this – as in most of the third act, for example, where a besotted Monty attempts to force himself on Marwood. Ultimately, it is also a film about failure. “I’m thirty in a month and I’ve got a sole flapping off my shoe” Withnail complains bitterly, full of venom over various roles being handed to other, more successful actors.
The character of Withnail was directly based off of Vivian MacKerrell, the actor with whom director Bruce Robinson had briefly lived and whom he had described as the funniest person he’d ever met, but who ultimately drank himself to death by his 40s. Like MacKerrell, Withnail is an incredibly flamboyant figure whose outbursts and excesses get most of the laughs throughout the film. In spite of his squalid lifestyle, he is clearly from quite a well-off, upper-class background, as opposed to the more driven Marwood. Besides Monty himself, there are numerous mentions of rich relatives, as well as an attitude of snobbishness and superiority on Withnail’s part that is ever-present throughout, even whilst he is wearing clothes that don’t fit him, with plastic bags in place of shoes, and spending much of the film drunk out of his mind, consuming everything from cheap wines to lighter fluid.
Withnail is a character defined by his pretensions, from making himself out to be a successful filmmaker or an army veteran when trying to get something out of the people he encounters, to his actual ambitions of becoming an actor. From the start, he sees himself as one of the greats, but it’s precisely because of this, his own sense of entitlement and aggrandisement, that he is left going nowhere. He spends most of the film venting his spleen at those he butts heads with, spitefully yelling from a hilltop in one scene that “I’ll show the lot of you… I’m going to be a star!”
Whilst the film ends with McGann’s character finding an acting job up north, after a madcap dash back to London and a brush with the police, Withnail is left where he is, laughing maniacally on the floor, a notice of eviction hanging over him. We see the two part in the middle of Regent’s Park, as it’s pouring with rain, after which, Withnail, here seen on his own for the first time in the film, performs the famous monologue “What a piece of work is man” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a part that he had confidently asserted he intends to play.
And the worst part is – he’s good, he recites it perfectly, Grant delivering the lines with a true sense of wretchedness, with his umbrella lifted up high, but with his only audience being the wolves in the zoo, who look on unimpressed. He ends the speech on a note of overwhelming defeat with the words “man delights not me; no, nor women neither,” a line that feels especially pertinent following the scenes with the closeted Monty, and perhaps implying the film is more of a love story than might at first glance be supposed.
This is the final image of the film, as he bows, and walks off into the rain. Supposedly, the original screenplay had ended on the character filling a shotgun with wine before committing suicide, but ultimately Robinson chose to take this out for being too dark an ending. Nevertheless, the implications of these final moments remain much the same.
When revisiting this film, it remains a lot of fun, with some fantastic, breakout performances from a cast who would continue to excel afterwards, and dialogue that sings throughout every scene. But much of its comedy also derives from a deep sense of disappointment and frustration underlying this that feels very British in its sensibility, and which helps it to stand out next to similar raucous comedy films.
Words by Daniel Goldstraw
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