Thursday, September 11, 2025

Withnail and I


Vivian MacKerrell

Image: Sotheby's

[ed. Never seen the movie, but this arresting photo caught my attention. Who is this guy? See also: Disdain, decay and a half-dead eel: Withnail and I:]
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"This is an age of rackety behaviour. Withnail is a story about rackety behaviour. More than that, it is about decay and disdain for the authorities that contrive to make us miserable. And who can say they haven’t felt the misery of life now? (...) Withnail taught me many things. I might not have understood the film when I first saw it. But the sense of freedom, even if ill-conceived, spat at me like water from a fatted pan. These were my people. I recognised the nihilism, the attraction of necking booze from the bottle at lunch, and the hard, unspoken words of love."