"Brideshead Eviscerated"

Barbara Nicolosi at Church of the Masses has a film review which may save you some time and money: Brideshead Eviscerated. She suggests that the anti-catholic slant of the film could be compared with making an adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird" that turned out savagely racist.

Here is the example she cites as the most egregious:
In the book, the Flyte family basically opposes Julia's engagement to Rex. In fact, the catchesis of the moral pygmy Rex Motram, who as a purely materialist capitalist is in Julia's words, "half a man", takes up the whole mid-point of the book. The family is seriously worried about Rex's lack of "spiritual curiosity," but Lady Marchmain respects her daughter's freedom too much to interfere in her daughter's marriage. Then, when it is discovered that Rex had been previously married and divorced, the Flyte family vigorously opposes the marriage and eventually Julia is cut off for leaving her faith to marry a divorced man.

In the movie, when Charles asks Julia why she married Rex she basically says that her mother forced her to do it because Rex was a rich Catholic.
Barbara' article has plenty of quotations illustrating the anti-Christian bias of the screenwriter and asks:
Why would producers choose a writer who so completely despises the core themes of the source material to adapt them for the screen?
It's a long time since I read Brideshead. Sounds as though I ought to re-familiarise myself now that the film has been released in the UK.

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