Withnail and I (1987)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Withnail and I (1987) – B. Robinson

I was prompted to watch this again after seeing Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) where Richard E. Grant plays Jack Hock, a hedonistic but down-and-out hustler who hasn’t aged too well but keeps up the pretence.  There are a number of clues that suggest that Hock could be another version of Withnail, Grant’s first feature role for which he will forever be remembered.  Indeed, Withnail too is a dissolute hedonist, a struggling actor whose best performances are with his friend (“I” or Marwood, played by Paul McGann).  At the end of the Sixties, the two need a break from the crushing reality that is their squalid flat and drug-addled friends (and so apparently did writer-director Bruce Robinson).  So, they trick a gullible gay uncle (Richard Griffiths) into letting them borrow his country villa in Penrith (Lake District, Northern England) to which they travel in a run-down old Jag, perilously.  Things are rustic there, to say the least, and the two have a number of misadventures, particularly once the uncle shows up with designs on Marwood.  Of course, the plot isn’t really the point – instead this is a fine rendering of the last days of youth, as career paths need to be chosen or another less secure path taken (leading to Jack Hock?).  The script is brilliant, full of caustic and quotable one-liners, employed with vigor by Grant especially.  Sure, it’s dank, beyond-the-pale, and not for your parents – but that period in life was never going to be viewer-friendly, was it?  A cult film that will live on in our memories (aside those real memories?).