Regularly voted one of the best comedies of all time, ‘Withnail and I’ is a British cult film that is also a classic. With great originality and flair, the film follows the (mis)fortunes of two out of work actors struggling to stay afloat (and out of the pubs) in 1969’s Camden. Desperate to escape London, they take a holiday to the Lake District, swapping their freezing cold London flat for Uncle Monty’s freezing cold cottage in the countryside. Unfortunately, it comes with a visit from the lecherous but entirely lovable Uncle Monty himself.
‘Withnail and I’ is full of off kilter British humour – by turns surreal (“Don’t threaten me with a dead fish”) and wry (“Look at this – accident blackspot? These aren’t accidents, they’re throwing themselves into the road! Throwing themselves into the road gladly to escape all this hideousness!”).
Set in the dregs of a decade that promised so much but which will end in disillusionment (a fate we fear for Withnail), the glamour of the ‘swinging 60s’ has long faded, and just out of shot, is the grey drudge of 70’s Britain, the long lines of unemployment, strikes and social unrest.
There is a running joke that Withnail’s theatrical agent is increasingly hard to contact (“The bastard must have died”) At one point, Withnail stands in a phone box in the middle of a remote field, having been cut off. Does a similar fate await Withnail and ‘I’s friendship? A severing of the ways you sense ‘I’ (Marwood) will cope with better than the outwardly treacherous but inwardly fragile Withnail. Like any truly great comedy there is an undercurrent of sadness.
Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on why a film so captures the public imagination. Written and directed by Bruce Robinson the script has the authenticity of someone who has really lived such a rackety bohemian life. Certainly, Richard E Grant can never better his performance as the charismatic but chronically unemployed and unemployable ‘Withnail’. Yet for me, the heart of the film is embodied in the role played by Richard Griffiths. Uncle Monty is one of the great English eccentrics! When this beloved actor died recently, I noticed how many people raised a glass not just to him but to Uncle Monty.
