I
T has been 30 years and a few days since Bruce Robinson gave the world Withnail and I, a dark and twisted comedy about two “resting” actors who, in an attempt to escape the hideousness of late ’60s London, decide to holiday in the sparse English countryside for a bit of rejuvenation.
Not much of a plot, I’ll admit, but then the film’s characters more than make up for this structural deficit. Especially Withnail — played by Richard E Grant — whose maniacal, selfserving antics will haunt the seamier parts of your subconscious for all eternity.
From the way he looks, drawn and gaunt under a cloak of tattered tweed, to the way he lives, one hand clenched around a misappropriated bottle of ’53 Margaux, the other bringing to his lips some rare herbs or prescribed chemicals, Withnail is perhaps one of the most fiendishly captivating protagonists you are ever likely to see on a screen.
Withnail is a snob of seedy elegance, sneering at the tabloids and those who consume them (“murder and all-bran and rape”).
His friend Marwood (the “I” of the title, played by Paul McGann) is less tumultuous, but Marwood’s car is a (barely) moving monument to the maelstrom that has become both their lives.
In its prime in the real world, Marwood’s powder-blue Jaguar Mark 2 was a stately animal. When first unveiled to the public at the 1959 Earl’s Court Motor Show, the Mark 2 was a luxury saloon that strictly adhered to the company’s long-standing corporate maxim of “grace, pace and space”. It came endowed with a walnut dashboard, leather seats, rear passenger heating and the option of a surprisingly potent 3.8-litre straight-six engine.
Back then it was the cream of the British executive crop.
In Marwood’s possession it has long gone to seed. The cowhide has cracked to the texture of
What a piece of work is this powderblue Mark II. By