‘Withnail and I,’ Re-released by Criterion, Still Soused

Nobody does being elegantly wasted like the English. Recently re-released by Criterion, Withnail and I is one of those movies that, like the titular pair of drink sodden wankers themselves, you either find utterly charming or you absolutely despise. There’s” I” (name officially withheld until he’s revealed as Norwood) and his symbiotic/ parasitic drinking buddy and best/only friend with the amusingly grand name. Richard E Grant’s Withnail is decidedly the main attraction, with his icy blue eyes and perpetual scowl curled around a dangling cigarette. Even though they’re both wannabe actors—to the extent that they actually want to be anything other than perpetually drunk—he clearly stars in his own movie wherever he goes.

 There’s not much really driving the plot; it’s all about the saucy dialogue. And there’s something quite English (“Thirteen million Londoners have to wake up to this. Murder and All-Bran and rape”) in the deadpan way these two eloquently hate on everything in sight. “There’s matter growing in the sink!” exclaims high-strung Marwood as dissolute Withnail drains the last of the wine and explains that this is “extremely distressing news.” At one point he matter-of-factly remarks that his tongue looks like it’s wearing a yellow sock.

The way Withnail claims that he was destined to be a great act-or takes the piss out of England’s grand tradition of theatre. When he stands on a little hill in twilight and shouts “You bastards! I’ll show the lot of you! I’m gonna be a starrrr!” while throwing his skinny arms out to nothing it’s ridiculous and hilarious and even oddly touching. Who doesn’t remember feeling that way once or twice in their misspent youth? Part of the point of being young is to waste it, naturally, but it’s also to start to draw a line, a deliberate border, between you and the rest of the world. You develop a kind of secret code that only you and your fellow degenerates can know.

Even though they made the movie in the 80’s, ‘Withnail’ steeps every hazy frame in a post-60’s hangover. As their drug dealer friend pithily muses, “they’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworth’s, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over.” It’s not too far from the way people still feel with all the talk these days about national decline. Merry old London’s in a state of demolition as they sneak away in a car, blasting Jimi Hendrix. And the countryside, once celebrated by the likes of Wordsworth and The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society, is now a muddy backwards mess.

The lads do resemble venerable icons of British bohemia: Norwood sports John Lennon-esque glasses and shaggy hair while Withhail’s disheveled scarf and elegantly ragged coat make him look like a 19^th Century Romantic poet. Considering that everyone around them is either a rube or a creep or a thug or all three at once their rude flamboyance becomes almost charismatic: “we want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!” Despite or perhaps because of the not-so-hidden homoerotic subtext, the two can’t stand each other half the time and yet they’re all they’ve got. Which isn’t much. At least they’re not one of those dreary normies. At one point Withnail leans out the window to gleefully shout at a passerby, “throw yourself into the road, darling, you haven’t got a chance!”

But the thing about all this sozzled bohemia is that sooner or later it ends. You just can’t live in a vermin-infested flat (‘you’re drugging the onions!?”) with dealers wandering in at all hours and dodging evictions forever. Either you put down the drink or the drug or the smoke or sooner or later it will put you down. Part of the fun of the movie is how ridiculous the two fellows truly are and how we are very much in on the joke of their loquacious wretchedness.

This buddy comedy of the damned isn’t going to last, and they both gradually come to know it. As they finally awkwardly split up, the leading man is now alone, leaning sullenly against iron bars, reciting bitter lines from Hamlet in a rainy park. Of course, Withnail will get the last word. He even does the disillusionment of the melancholy Dane quite well indeed. It’s a pity that no one’s left to hear it.