Withnail and Me

For me, Withnail will always be number one. I came late to it but I fell hard. I ordered it as a download on Amazon on 29th May 2017. This means I was starting my year as a consultant to a Swiss company in Basel. I was based in the UK and found myself with time on my hands. So much happened that year, but I can remember what was going on in my thoughts.

I was wondering why my wife wrote off our new Nissan inside twelve months. I was in the mood for obsessing and I think I watched it front to back several times in a week. Admittedly it was on in the background, but it was on. I almost memorised the whole thing in a way I had not done since finding Monty Python and the Holy Grail in my very early twenties.

None of my university friends had older brothers. Those brothers were the ones who introduced us to Pink Floyd, for example. Literally nobody I knew had an older sister, but I think that is a different world. Two of my better friends in Anlaby had older brothers and they were very influential. They actually had girlfriends. Well, one of them did and only for five minutes. I remember she had a bike and seemed impossibly unattainable even though she was frequently hanging around their house. We might have watched Countdown together in the days of Vorderman. The played Boggle and other games without feeling threatened. It was that kind of house, a sophisticated gaff compared to the sort of culture we consumed. Which isn't saying a lot, is it. Mostly we just wanted to play rudimentary computer games on Sinclair hardware. Later on it was Atari or Amiga. We had time for computers and music, a very narrow range of music that included Duran Duran but not Michael Jackson. It included Graceland by Paul Simon but not Elton John. It was narrow and irregular. None of us really fixated on films. And anyway the point is that none of our older brothers watched Withnail so neither did we.

Since that 2017 discovery of Withnail I have returned to it every year or so. Considering how hard I fell for Pulp Fiction, a film I have watched at most three times in a longer time horizon, this is a very serious fixation. Partly it is because Withnail is British. It is so funny you will be sick at some point, even if you don't try to copy their drinking habits. The director, Bruce Robinson, died a thousand deaths to get the film made. It was originally a self-published novel that was run off on photocopiers in every corner of London. People he did not know read it and told him how funny it was. They did that with my account of the French Exchange 1993 as well, but George Harrison declined to turn that into a feature length movie.

Johnny Depp is a Withnail fan and hunted Robinson down to get him to make The Rum Diary, an astonishing little novel by Hunter S. Thompson. That was insanely funny as well, but in a more refined Hollywood way. And although we all loved that film, it almost cost Depp and co-star Amber Heard their reputations and careers. A more tragic public implosion of a human relationship is very difficult to imagine. Although that is basically the plot of Withnail and I in a sentence.

I'm not sure how to continue. Do I assume you have seen it? Hasn't everyone? And if you're feeling left out, will that spur you on to go and see it? If I try to summarise the plot you will miss the point that this is as pure a character story as a human mind ever conceived. I don't think you absolutely need to watch it, but if you feel the need, bob on over there and watch it. We will wait.

Welcome back! Let's look at this photo a little more. It could almost be today. Marwood is the successful one, the thinker, the one with weak eyes. Some people do dress like this now, although if we're honest not many people dressed exactly like this in the 60s. The only dating artifact is the newspaper. It's depressing to imagine these two reading the news on an iPad, but they would be unlikely to be holding a paper today. Although, the only way to steal the news, for obtaining the news without paying, is still to nick a paper from the kiosk or find one on a park bench. Just as the pub still thrives in London, so does the newspaper kiosk. How can one of the world's largest and most forward-looking cities also have such a strong nostalgic streak?

Cowardice is an important theme in Withnail. You don't want me to summarise the plot because there isn't one. Cowardice. They are avoiding their deep personal issues, the issues with their friendship, and their friendships with their even odder friends. Whether they are running from that brute in the Mother Black Cap pub. They are avoiding auditions. They cause mayhem in a Penrith tea room and leg it just in time. They get pissed and drive south on the motorway, and somehow manage to avoid prison. They're always running away, never towards. They hide from the poacher. They hide from Uncle Monty when they think he is someone else come to kill them in their beds. The film only ends at all because Marwood (I) finally gets a role that he is brave enough to accept. Only then does Withnail stoop so low as to practice the art of acting, and he chooses some mute and very damp zoo animals as his audience.

The only person more coward than Withnail was Vivian, Bruce Robinson's friend whom all of this is based on. Vivian was not happy. Beware. This is a cautionary tale. But fucking hell it is hilarious.