in the era the film was influential I knew a few people who were like this Viv character and it seems like it's been long enough that the archetype bears some eulogizing. there's no romance in that kind of failure anymore.
the movie is the most literal romance of any character in a film ever. By any objective criteria, Withnail was a horrible person. Richard E. Grant's ability to be a living cartoon made it hilarious and charming and he let you suspend your disbelief in Withnail's grandeur and go along for the absurd ride. the important idea is that romance is seeing things as greater or more significant, (or just generally other) than they are. That's what Withnail and I was about.
He was harmless and funny because his manipulations were so low-stakes and geared to just getting alcohol for free, but you could see he drank and destroyed himself for the same reasons anyone does, because he knew all he had were the tools of a monster and just didn't know any other way to be.
The archetype is extinct today because the relationships it needed to survive are outmoded. someone being from your school or neighbourhood doesn't figure in our ideas of identity where you'd tolerate a loser with charming delusions because they were a fixture in your own story. Nobody's wives or girlfriends would tolerate them anyway, and I think we're all too mercenary now.
to me the sadness of the story is that it's a meditation on romance itself. it ends where you see Withnail as the volatile addicted animal he is, and he (or really, we as the audience) is slightly redeemed by his hamlet speech so as to be reminded that there was at least some truth to what we believed in about him, and that we ("I") weren't just decieved and manipulated. his grandeur dignified or at least rendered harmless our abuse. the original script doesn't provide that final bit of comfort, however.
maybe there's a version of that story for today, but I don't think a Withnail character could actually survive long enough socially to become interesting enough for anyone to find them romantic enough to tolerate.
the movie is the most literal romance of any character in a film ever. By any objective criteria, Withnail was a horrible person. Richard E. Grant's ability to be a living cartoon made it hilarious and charming and he let you suspend your disbelief in Withnail's grandeur and go along for the absurd ride. the important idea is that romance is seeing things as greater or more significant, (or just generally other) than they are. That's what Withnail and I was about.
He was harmless and funny because his manipulations were so low-stakes and geared to just getting alcohol for free, but you could see he drank and destroyed himself for the same reasons anyone does, because he knew all he had were the tools of a monster and just didn't know any other way to be.
The archetype is extinct today because the relationships it needed to survive are outmoded. someone being from your school or neighbourhood doesn't figure in our ideas of identity where you'd tolerate a loser with charming delusions because they were a fixture in your own story. Nobody's wives or girlfriends would tolerate them anyway, and I think we're all too mercenary now.
to me the sadness of the story is that it's a meditation on romance itself. it ends where you see Withnail as the volatile addicted animal he is, and he (or really, we as the audience) is slightly redeemed by his hamlet speech so as to be reminded that there was at least some truth to what we believed in about him, and that we ("I") weren't just decieved and manipulated. his grandeur dignified or at least rendered harmless our abuse. the original script doesn't provide that final bit of comfort, however.
maybe there's a version of that story for today, but I don't think a Withnail character could actually survive long enough socially to become interesting enough for anyone to find them romantic enough to tolerate.