The ultimate break-up film? Withnail and I
Anyone who’s been through it more than once has a break-up ritual — something they do continually in the early days.
Some people run, or cook, or get obsessed with window-boxes. I watch Withnail and I. Nightly to start with. Then, as the days turn into weeks, I taper off, until it’s only something I need to reach for from time to time, like an ice-pack for a bad knee.
Do I watch it because it cheers me up? No. In fact, exactly the opposite. Pour yourself a large gin (and a pint of cider; ice in the cider), and pull up a chair.
When I first saw it, aged 12, I was delighted by the responsibility-free version of adulthood it dangled in front of me. One day, I promised myself, I too would sit around drinking in a coat and my pants (I am now a freelance journalist; draw your own conclusions.) My first car only had Hendrix CDs in it, and as a student I watched it so many times that I could recite most of the script from memory.
Although I understood that, thematically, it wasn’t all sweetness and light (Unemployment! Homelessness! Late-stage alcoholism!), I never really saw past the booze and the fags and the gags. Then, in my late twenties, the relationship I was in derailed itself, and I found myself suddenly uncoupled. It was me who ended it, but that actually made things worse: on top of all the pain of loss was a crushing weight of guilt. I was reasonably sure I would never smile again.
What I needed, I decided two weeks in, was something to take my mind off things. What I needed was Withnail and I. So I got together a small selection of the drinks from the film — sherry, red wine, brandy — and settled down in front of the TV with them. As King Curtis’s shimmering cover of A Whiter Shade of Pale started up, I felt like I was slipping into the most comfortable clothes I owned.
Except suddenly, they didn’t fit in the way they always had. I was watching my old favourite with new eyes — the bits that had always made me laugh the hardest now struck me as almost horribly, almost unbearably poignant. As Danny the dealer rolled the Camberwell Carrot, I had a blurry epiphany.
“This is a very sad film,” I said out loud.
The next morning I realised that I’d been right. It is a very sad film. In fact, it’s a film about one of the saddest things there is: leaving a relationship not because you’ve stopped caring about each other, but because you simply can’t be together any more.
Of course, this is not a love story in the traditional sense. There’s no romance, or sex — despite the best efforts of poor old Uncle Monty, who you hope would have had a better time of it in 2017. But Withnail and Marwood (that’s what “I” is called in the screenplay; I told you I was a superfan) are, to all intents and purposes, a couple. They live together, they’re out of work together, they eat dinner together in the bathroom. Their lives are totally in synch. But not for much longer.
The end is there in the beginning. Right at the start, Marwood rushes back from the greasy-spoon where he’s been fretting about his flatmate to find Withnail complaining that they’ve run out of alcohol. And that, really, tells you everything that you need to know about the state of their relationship. Marwood has been thinking about Withnail’s problems. Withnail has been thinking about wine. Clearly, they can’t go on like this.
The thing that attracts you to someone so often turns out to be the final nail in the coffin. You can imagine the scene on the first day of drama school: Marwood, just arrived in London, utterly starstruck by his new classmate. Everything about him would have been intoxicating: the disdain for hard work, the vast sense of entitlement, the superhuman capacity for booze and weed and pills. Whatever else life with Withnail might be, Marwood would have told himself, it wouldn’t be boring.
Except now, it’s starting to feel that way. The two of them are nearly 30 and they have almost nothing to show for it. Withnail is preoccupied by getting the heating to work and filling the hours until opening time, but endings are on Marwood’s mind. “Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane,” he thinks while he’s shaving. “Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you’ve got to get out, because it’s crashing.”
“If you’re hanging onto a rising balloon, you’re presented with a difficult decision,” says Danny, echoing him in a rare moment of profundity. “Let go before it’s too late, or hang on and keep getting higher, posing the question: how long can you keep a grip on the rope?” Deep down, Marwood knows he needs to get out. But instead, he suggests they go on holiday.
To start with, it looks like his resuscitation attempt might just do the trick. The bit where he flips his shades down in his and Withnail’s ancient Jaguar as the wrecking ball slams into the building behind them is a glorious show of defiance. The sun is shining and the guitar gives you goosebumps. What do these two need apart from each other and an industrial supply of aspirin?
Of course, it only ends up making things worse. Away from home and the familiar, the cracks really start to show. Marwood and Withnail’s bickering (“Why don’t you use a cup like any other human being?” “Why don’t you wash up occasionally like any other human being?”) takes on an edge as it becomes clear just how incompatible they actually are — optimist versus pessimist, realist versus fantasist. There are moments of unity, like their showdown in the Penrith Tea Rooms, but the laughter feels sour, curdled.
By itself, this wouldn’t necessarily spell the end. But in the background, there’s something else. Marwood has had an audition. It’s not a big part — Withnail, who won’t even consider the understudy role he’s offered in The Seagull, pours scorn on it — but it’s something. It’s a good theatre. It’s a good play. And it would take him away from London. That doesn’t seem to bother him, but it bothers Withnail a lot. Not enough, though.
Every time you watch Withnail and I, you spot something new. The suggestive radish in Monty’s buttonhole, say, or the car’s one functioning windscreen-wiper not being on the driver’s side. What I noticed on the night of the kitchen-sink episode was Marwood’s face. The horrified rictus grins when he’s on the receiving end of a double entendre, of course. But mostly the way he looks whenever he’s forced to confront the fact that the person he cares about most in the world wouldn’t think twice before pushing him under the bus.
The first time it happens is in the Mother Black Cap, when Withnail refers to him as his “acquaintance” in the hope that it’ll save him from having his nose broken. Then again in the Lake District when, faced with more peril— a charging bull this time — he leaps over a wall and leaves him to it. And in that excruciating confrontation with Monty, you see the realisation dawning that his best friend would, quite literally, sell him out for a couple of bottles of wine. He knows that this is it. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t go back.
“What you have done will have to be paid for,” he tells Withnail the next morning. Withnail thinks he’s joking. But then a telegram arrives, letting Marwood know that he’s got the part. And finally, Withnail can see what the rest of us have been wise to all along. It’s over.
The remained of the film is like watching a slow-motion demolition. Withnail hijacking the car and getting them arrested. The two of them arriving home to discover that Danny has broken in and cashed their cheques. Marwood finding the notice of eviction. The scaffolding that supported their existence has collapsed, and repair is impossible.
In the final scene, Marwood, who’s cut his hair off, refuses a drink for the first time. He’s leaving for the station, about to start his new life. His dad, he tells Withnail, will be along to pick up the rest of his stuff. It isn’t au revoir, but goodbye — and Withnail knows it. He insists on going with Marwood through torrential rain, until he tells him that he doesn’t want him to. Withnail watches him walk away. He doesn’t look back.
In the original ending for the film, Withnail goes home and shoots himself. But in the version we have he gets a reprieve. Out of nowhere, he delivers a blistering Hamlet soliloquy to the wolves in Regent’s Park. No more sadness now, read the stage directions. All the fire is back. Perhaps this is the wake-up call he needs. Perhaps he’ll do something with his talent after all. Perhaps.
“I shall miss you, Withnail,” Marwood says, almost in a whisper, when he leaves him. He puts a hand on his shoulder, and you know that he will, every day. But he has to go. It’s all he can do, for both of them.
And that, when you’re patching up a broken heart, isn’t such a bad thing to be reminded of. Chin chin.
