When Richard E. Grant received his first Academy Award nomination in 2019 for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, it felt less like a long time coming than a mischievous coup. The British actor has cultivated a long career as a delightfully acidic presence in works of culture both high (The Age of Innocence, Gosford Park) and low (Hudson Hawk, Spice World), his characters always quick with a quip, delivered in his trademark silver-tongued accent. If they feel any pain, it’s often hidden beneath layers of irony. His work as the perpetually soused Jack Hock has a startling vulnerability in comparison, but it’s not entirely unexpected, recalling another perpetual souse whose flamboyance can’t quite mask his underlying desperation. With Grant turning sixty-five this week, there’s no better time to raise a toast to his iconic film debut in 1987’s Withnail and I. It’s what his characters would do.
We hear Withnail before we see him. Asked if he wants some takeaway tea, he croaks “no” from behind a closed door. The first character we actually meet is the titular “I,” whose lack of a name is both a conscious narrative device and a concession to how quickly he’s about to be sidelined. He’s also a stand-in for writer-director Bruce Robinson, who based the script on his own unpublished autobiographical novel about his experiences as a struggling alcoholic actor. As played by Paul McGann, he’s the slightly more well-adjusted of the pair, given to bouts of hypochondria and paranoia that Withnail is uninterested in indulging. “I” looks relatively healthy, though, compared to his roommate.
Robinson has claimed that he told Grant “half of you has got to go” before he’d agree to cast him. Grant has denied this, but he does look worryingly skeletal here. Introduced stalking up the stairs, drinking down the dregs of their last wine bottle, and looking at once damp and desiccated, Withnail’s bulging blue eyes and yellow tongue speak to his status as a denizen of what “I” calls “the arena of the unwell.” Viewers may be surprised to learn that Grant is a teetotaler due to an alcohol allergy, so authentically does he capture the pickled personality of an addict on the precipice of total self-destruction. Though he hasn’t heard from his agent in three months, Withnail approaches every interaction like a theatrical scene, playing to the rafters even when he’s outdoors. “I demand to have some booze,” he exhorts before chugging a bottle of lighter fluid. A star is born.
The film is a paragon of the so-called “hangout” genre. The plot, as much as it could be said to have one, concerns an impromptu trip the pair takes to the countryside. Withnail finagles a stay at his wealthy Uncle Monty’s place in Penrith, but they find the rain, mud, and crusty locals as disagreeable as the perversities of London. “We’ve gone on vacation by mistake,” as Withnail puts it. The unexpected arrival of the lecherous Monty (Richard Griffiths, best known as Mr. Dursley in the Harry Potter films), who has aggressive designs on “I,” begins to drive a wedge between the two friends (a comedic situation that skirts the edge of gay panic, even as Monty comes off as the most sympathetic character in the film). What finally puts the nail in the coffin, though, is “I”’s acceptance of an acting job in Manchester and the tacit acknowledgement that when he leaves his life in London, he’ll be leaving Withnail, too, probably for good.
Robinson isn’t concerned with the expected ups and downs of traditional addict arcs, and this isn’t a story about whether Withnail manages to pull himself out of the pit of his alcoholism or submits to it entirely. In some ways, the parting of Withnail and “I” is a natural one foreordained by its setting in 1969. As philosophical drug dealer Danny muses in a late scene, the entirety of world culture is on the brink of an ending. “The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over,” he says. “How long can you keep a grip on the rope?” He’s speaking metaphorically of politics in a country that will soon elect Margaret Thatcher, but he could just as easily be describing the delusional cycle of substance abuse.
Eventually “I” cleans up and moves on while Withnail remains behind, slugging from a liquor bottle and perfectly reciting the “What a piece of work is man” soliloquy from Hamlet to a caged wolf in a zoo. It’s a melancholic ending, with its implicit suggestion that Withnail is actually the more instinctively talented of the two. But it’s also kinder than the one Robinson originally planned, with Withnail offing himself onscreen by filling the barrel of a shotgun with wine and shooting himself while he drank. If Withnail does die, we won’t know about it, as “I” likely wouldn’t either. Like Jack Hock, who by Forgive Me’s closing moments is succumbing to AIDS, he’s been granted the grace of an ellipsis rather than a period. Withnail likely won’t make the most of his time, but viewers are lucky that Grant has. Here’s to many more. 
“Withnail and I” is now streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.
