The reason the film is so quotable is due to its starting life as a novel and its gestation period being so long. There is, you’ll agree, a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ oh so very special about a firm, young carrot.” “I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium,” he says at one point. Ralph Brown is inspired casting as the hair-obsessed dope-head Danny, creator of the “Camberwell carrot.”Īnd the wondrous Richard Griffiths is perfection as Withnail’s lecherous but loaded Uncle Monty, given to spouting quasi-profound drivel dripping in innuendo. The film’s – entirely male – supporting players are no less effective. A less showy role, he’s basically Robinson himself. Top-billed Paul McGann was Marwood, the “I” of the title. Walking the tightrope between comedy and tragedy, he pulls off the not inconsiderable feat of making Withnail likeable. The film made a star of Swazi-born tee-totaller Richard E Grant. It’s essentially the kind of film Ealing Studios would have made had Micheal Balcon not been such a prude… and 30 years later. You see, Withnail is that most English of English films. I’m tempted to say that if you do not know it you may as well go and watch Homes Under the Hammer but I’m hoping a few Withnail virgins will be intrigued enough to seek it out. I’m afraid if you don’t know – and love – the film, this will all seem a total mystery to you. Mind you, in these enlightened times it may not be a good idea to flip down your shades and shriek “Scrubbers!” at a posse of passing schoolgirls. Few fans can enter a tearoom without at least thinking of ordering “the finest wines available to humanity” or lamenting they’ve “gone on holiday by mistake” or fingered “a firm young carrot” in Morrisons. It does, however, contain possibly more quotable lines than any other film. A paean to excess – particularly alcohol – it’s quite rightly been described as akin to a hangover. What makes the film so memorable is not what happens but how it happens. They return to learn that one of them is about to be plucked from obscurity and poverty, leaving the other behind. Bored and frightened, they pile into a clapped-out, one-eyed Jag to sponge off Withnail’s predatory uncle in Cumbria for a while. A prime example of this is Bruce Robinson’s tragi-comedy, Withnail and I, the subject of an affectionate appreciation by Toby Benjamin entitled Withnail and I: From Cult to Classic.įor those unfamiliar with the – for the want of a better word – plot, Withnail is the tale of two impecunious unemployed actors living out the fag end of the 60s in a squalid Camden Town flat. I mean, what other country could have given the world The Third Man, Great Expectations, Local Hero, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kes, Trainspotting, Holiday on the Buses? Well, you can’t get a coconut every time.įor obvious reasons we’re particularly adept at producing low-budget movies stuffed to the gunnels with eccentrics. I’d like to think our plucky little island often punches above its weight when it comes to films. I DON’T know about you but I went right off François Truffaut when he said that British cinema was a “contradiction in terms”. Bruce Robinson at work on Withnail and I
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