{"id":18236,"date":"2022-05-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=18236"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:12:51","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:12:51","slug":"celebrating-richard-e-grant-at-65-and-his-greatest-role-at-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/celebrating-richard-e-grant-at-65-and-his-greatest-role-at-35\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Richard E. Grant at 65 (and His Greatest Role at 35)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Richard E. Grant received his first Academy Award nomination in 2019 for Can You Ever Forgive Me?<\/em>, 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<\/em>, Gosford Park<\/em>) and low (Hudson Hawk, Spice World<\/em>), his characters always quick with a quip, delivered in his trademark silver-tongued accent. If they feel any pain, it\u2019s often hidden beneath layers of irony. His work as the perpetually soused Jack Hock has a startling vulnerability in comparison, but it\u2019s not entirely unexpected, recalling another perpetual souse whose flamboyance can\u2019t quite mask his underlying desperation. With Grant turning sixty-five this week, there\u2019s no better time to raise a toast to his iconic film debut in 1987\u2019s Withnail and I<\/em>. It\u2019s what his characters would do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hear Withnail before we see him. Asked if he wants some takeaway tea, he croaks \u201cno\u201d from behind a closed door. The first character we actually meet is the titular \u201cI,\u201d whose lack of a name is both a conscious narrative device and a concession to how quickly he\u2019s about to be sidelined. He\u2019s also a stand-in for writer-director Bruce Robinson, who based the script on his own unpublished autobiographical novel about his experiences as a struggling alcoholic actor.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\u2019s the slightly more well-adjusted of the pair, given to bouts of hypochondria and paranoia that Withnail is uninterested in indulging. \u201cI\u201d looks relatively healthy, though, compared to his roommate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robinson has claimed that he told Grant \u201chalf of you has got to go\u201d before he\u2019d 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\u2019s bulging blue eyes and yellow tongue speak to his status as a denizen of what \u201cI\u201d calls \u201cthe arena of the unwell.\u201d 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\u2019t heard from his agent in three months, Withnail approaches every interaction like a theatrical scene, playing to the rafters even when he\u2019s outdoors. \u201cI demand to have some booze,\u201d he exhorts before chugging a bottle of lighter fluid. A star is born. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The film is a paragon of the so-called \u201changout\u201d genre<\/a>. 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\u2019s place in Penrith, but they find the rain, mud, and crusty locals as disagreeable as the perversities of London. \u201cWe\u2019ve gone on vacation by mistake,\u201d as Withnail puts it. The unexpected arrival of the lecherous Monty (Richard Griffiths, best known as Mr. Dursley in the Harry Potter<\/em> films), who has aggressive designs on \u201cI,\u201d 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 \u201cI\u201d\u2019s acceptance of an acting job in Manchester and the tacit acknowledgement that when he leaves his life in London, he\u2019ll be leaving Withnail, too, probably for good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robinson isn\u2019t concerned with the expected ups and downs of traditional addict arcs, and this isn\u2019t 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 \u201cI\u201d 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. \u201cThe greatest decade in the history of mankind is over,\u201d he says. \u201cHow long can you keep a grip on the rope?\u201d He\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually \u201cI\u201d cleans up and moves on while Withnail remains behind, slugging from a liquor bottle and perfectly reciting the \u201cWhat a piece of work is man\u201d soliloquy from Hamlet <\/em>to a caged wolf in a zoo. It\u2019s a melancholic ending, with its implicit suggestion that Withnail is actually the more instinctively talented of the two. But it\u2019s 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\u2019t know about it, as \u201cI\u201d likely wouldn\u2019t either. Like Jack Hock, who by Forgive Me<\/em>\u2019s closing moments is succumbing to AIDS, he\u2019s been granted the grace of an ellipsis rather than a period. Withnail likely won\u2019t make the most of his time, but viewers are lucky that Grant has. Here\u2019s to many more. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Withnail and I” is now streaming on HBO Max<\/a> and the Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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