The Guardian – 14th November, 2011

In our writers’ favourite films series, Tim Jonze raises a glass or six to Bruce Robinson’s tale of two struggling actors who go on holiday by mistake.

Withnail & I
Production year: 1986
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 102 mins
Directors: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Paul McGann, Richard E Grant, Richard Griffiths

‘I think a drink, don’t you?’… Paul McGann and Richard E Grant in Withnail and I. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

On telling the powers that be on the film desk that Withnail and I was my favourite movie, I was informed this was a “typical choice for muso types”. I was outraged. Were they suggesting “muso types” were the kind of drug-hungry, unemployable reprobates portrayed in the film? The sort of people who live on little more than raw potato, red wine and lighter fuel? Oh …

I have to confess, I first heard about Withnail and I in terms of a drinking game – could you watch the film while matching the two lead characters shot for shot, pint for pint, Camberwell carrot for Camberwell carrot? Yet for all the wanton liver damage caught on celluloid here, Withnail and I is so much more than just a reckless bender. For me, it’s a devastating portrayal of that terrifying moment when adulthood finally catches up with you.

Doubtless the film buffs gathered here don’t need a lengthy plot summary so I’ll keep it brief. Withnail (Richard E Grant) and I (aka Marwood – although you’d only know this from the screenplay – played by Paul McGann) decide they need a break from their squalid lives as struggling actors in Camden and persuade Withnail’s rich uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) to let them spend the weekend at his cottage in Cumbria. Their plans for a period of relaxation and indulgence are thwarted, however, by their inability to cope with ghastly weather, frosty locals and the advances of Monty himself, who joins them unannounced halfway through their stay and makes it his mission to have his wicked way with Marwood.

I first watched this plot unfold as a teenager, along with my little brother. We resolved to spend the next 15 years watching it again. And again. And again. Before long the most quoted lines (“Hair are your aerials”, “I feel like a pig shat in my head”, “Perfumed ponce!”, “We’ve come on holiday by mistake”, “I demand to have some booze!” … oh, sorry, you haven’t got all day?) became passé and we started finding hidden humour lying in the merest twinge of facial expression. (Marwood’s terrified grins being the best.)

Like all great comedy films, you’ll notice new lines with each viewing. When I revisited the film I couldn’t believe I’d missed the potted cauliflower in Monty’s living room as he raves about his love for growing vegetables (“I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium”) or Marwood’s withering line about having to listen to “yet another anecdote about [Monty’s] sensitive crimes … in a punt with a chap called Norman who had red hair and a book of poetry stained with the butter drips from crumpets.”

These are the reasons why Withnail and I makes me crease up with laughter, but they’re not why I truly love this movie. The film is set in 1969, a time when what Danny refers to as “the greatest decade in the history of mankind” is fizzling out, leaving an entire generation with one hell of a comedown. The feeling of a utopian dream dying is encapsulated in one of Danny’s most memorable lines – “They’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworths, man” – and parallels our two anti-heroes’ own farewell to their 20s. (As Withnail says: “I’m 30 in a month and I’ve got a sole flapping from my shoe.”)

As a teenager I identified with Withnail’s sense of rebellion, even if the rebellion we see only ever really extends as far as driving dangerously and upsetting a few old ladies in a tea room. When you’re young you feel anything is possible and one day – to paraphrase Withnail’s drunken pronouncement to an empty Penrith sky – you’ll show the lot of them, you’re gonna be a star. My brother and I certainly did, as we smoked weed in the local park on hot summer nights and plotted a fantastical future. But the people you’d planned your revolution with end up betraying you: your peers settle down, they sign up for management training schemes, they have kids. Some of us delay adult responsibilities by becoming music journalists – a chance not to grow up for another decade at least – but you can only hide for so long.

When Marwood secures an acting job and finally leaves Withnail outside in the rain, Withnail’s face isn’t sad, it’s scared. His decision to opt out of the system has suddenly left him stranded. “There’s always time for a drink?” he says, offering to share a stolen bottle of Monty’s 1953 Château Margaux. But Marwood, with his newly cropped hair, needs to cut him loose and move on. Throughout the film, the selfish, cowardly Withnail is never the character you empathise with, yet this feels like another one of those massive betrayals.

Adulthood. Responsibility. The meaning of friendship and the passing of time. Behind the boozing, these are some of the big themes Withnail and I deals with. Themes, no doubt, that some of us “muso types” are still trying to run from.

Tim Jonze.