TheGuardian.co.uk – 22nd November, 2011

My favourite film: Readers’ comments – week four

We’re picking out your finest responses to our My favourite film series, for which Guardian writers have selected the movies they go back to time and again.

Here’s a roundup of how you responded in week four, when the selections were Withnail & I, Rushmore, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Backbeat and In Bruges

“You can’t ruin a film by quoting it,” said magicman of Withnail & I, the pic that opened the fourth week of our series on our writers’ favourite films. But, by God, you can try. A full half of the 447 comments that joined Tim Jonze in raising a glass to Bruce Robinson’s ragtag comedy reproduced Withnail’s wisdom to the letter. Withnail and Marwood fled the city for an accidental holiday again. Uncle Monty made his intentions forcefully clear once more. Camberwell carrots were rolled, fights were weasled out of. Something’s flesh remained. It all happened here, many times over.

There was a mini backlash (“I almost never mention to anyone that it’s in my top five favourite films of all time,” said stpauli. “Simply because I can’t bear to hear people endlessly parroting quotes from it at me and thus ruining it”), there were anecdotes about quotes (both stars – Richard E Grant and Paul McGann – have had lines yelled at them while out walking the remote countryside apparently) and some of you got savvy. “He’s not the Messiah,” said Lushattic. “He’s a … oh wait”, which made us chuckle. In the same vein, bobskiT was Spartacus, RogerBlank was blowing the bloody doors off and Nufced started govoreeting real horrorshow.

Tim, who talked eloquently about growing up watching the film with his younger brother, saw it all coming. “The most quoted lines became passé,” he said in his review. “We started finding hidden humour lying in the merest twinge of facial expression”. To him Withnail was about ageing and conformity – a slightly sad buddy movie set in a decade “fizzling out, leaving an entire generation with one hell of a comedown”. TheMicroProf agreed: “It has both polythene-bound feet firmly planted in tragedy,” he/she said. “Its themes are centred around loss. Withnail’s loss of dignity, career and, ultimately, friendship. Monty’s lost love. Danny’s lost decade. In the final analysis only Marwood gained, and it is his departure from the culture of loss that provides such a moving climax”. “It’s the pathos that makes the film more than just a quote-fest,” said xtrapnel.

SydneyTaff was a little harsher in his/her analysis. “This film is the quintessence of pretence and contrivance,” they said. “It’s a study in University Humour. The cinematic equivalent of The Young Ones; in jokes, unfunny puns and asides, all the clever things we wished we’d said when we were 20”. Which, to us, encapsulates every decent comedy from Duck Soup to Wayne’s World, but there you go.

DoktorRovindi had “very vague” memories of seeing it. “A mate and me had consumed various chemicals and snuck a bottle of whiskey in,” they said. “Unsurprisingly, our antics, whilst closely resembling the on-screen antics, where deemed OTT and the boys from West End Central hauled us out for swift journey to the cells and a charge of drunk and disorderly”. Let’s hope, despite the moniker, that TheLittleWaster isn’t of the same school. He or she has 153 viewings and counting. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell…

To read about the other films of the week, just click on this link to go to The Guardian website.