Withnail and I

(Bruce Robinson, UK, 1987)

An elegy to the Swinging ‘60s, Withnail and I takes a personal – to the point of microscopic – focus on those times.

Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the narrator, Marwood (Paul McGann), are two rarely employed, down-and-out actors living in a London hovel. They drift through their days in a haze of drugs and booze. The film is melancholic-wintry to the bone, whether in the grimy city or the muddy country: it rains, it pours, and our anti-heroes seem regularly at the point of freezing to death.

In plot terms, nothing much happens here beyond an ill-judged holiday in the country, and a few encounters with Withnail’s wealthy, eccentric uncle, Monty (Richard Griffiths). The relation between our anti-heroes, ultimately, less resolves itself than simply stops: the moment of Marwood getting a theatre role terminates their bond and their shared life.

This is the kind of movie where detail counts for everything – and what rich detail it is. The close effects of various stimulants on the heroes’ responses and behaviour are hilariously observed by writer-director Bruce Robinson (the material is loosely autobiographical) – the film both swims in and pre-dates the grunge revivals of the 1990s and beyond. Just as well captured are the different, contrasting environments (pub, farm, cottage, shack … ) the central pair stumble into.

The strictly oblique focus taken on the social and cultural upheavals of the era is illuminating and poignant – even if there’s a palpable queasiness betrayed whenever the film approaches the topic of Monty’s rapaciously gay sexuality. Still, around the stereotype there’s a ring of truth: I’ve met at least one Monty in my time.

Withnail and I is a fine mixture of eccentric humour, naturalistic slice-of-low-life, and all-too-human misadventure. It fast became – with somewhat wearying results – a cult-film for eternal-student types everywhere.

Robinson’s subsequent How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) is a spirited satire worth checking out. And never forget that, once upon a time, Robinson was the dashing cad Lieutenant Pinson in François Truffaut’s grave tale of obsession, The Story of Adele H. (1975)!

MORE Robinson: Jennifer Eight, In Dreams

© Adrian Martin 1 June 1990