The 1981 BBC television miniseries of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited was an 11-episode feast of sensory lushness and emotional nuance. You might wonder why anyone would even bother to try compacting the same material into a big-screen movie of conventional length—until you see this masterful adaptation by Julian Jarrold. It’s no less nuanced nor lush than its predecessor, while Jarrold and scriptwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies condense Waugh’s busy plot down to its essential pas de trois. Matthew Goode is exceptional as Charles Ryder, an inexperienced, vulnerable, yet quietly self-possessed young Londoner of no family who goes to Oxford in the 1920s in hopes of becoming an artist. He’s captivated by charming Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw, of Perfume and I’m Not There), a cheerfully dissolute young aristocrat who introduces Charles (and defends him from) his circle of bitchy aesthetes. Hungry for life, the ‘reliable” Charles revels in Sebastian’s heady orbit; when brought home to Sebastian’s lavish family estate, Brideshead (the private family chapel looks like Westminster Abbey), Charles is awed, drinking it all in. (Including an occasional, tentative kiss from his new best friend.) But while Sebastian warns, “I’m not having you mixed up with my family,” Charles can’t help falling for Julia (Hayley Atwell), Sebastian’s beguiling, complicated sister. The sly, arch, and occasionally heartbreaking dynamics between this trio play out across a breathtaking visual landscape, from the magnificence of Brideshead itself, Venice, and Morocco, to a fabulously art deco ocean liner crossing the Atlantic. But looming above it all is Waugh’s central theme of sin, guilt, and faith, personified by the sibling’s mother, Lady Marchmain (the great Emma Thompson), an elegant vampire of Roman Catholic guilt-mongering who destroys each of her children with imperious precision and calls it God’s will. Philosophical balance is provided by the delightful Michael Gambon as rascally old Lord Marchmain, who has long since fled to Italy with a more forgiving mistress to escape his succubus wife (although he carps, “The Italians are unable to paint anything without putting Christ dying in the middle of it!”). As fine as all these players are (Whishaw is especially touching), Goode delivers the pivotal performance as humanist atheist Charles, whose inner debate over the power of faith for both good and ill keeps us enthralled to the very last frame.

(PG-13) 135 minutes. (***1/2)

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