BASIL

A NEW FILM VERSION

The villain Mannion is played by Christian Slater, perhaps best known for Interview with the Vampire, Broken Arrow, and Murder in the First. Slater also co-produces the film.

Margaret Sherwin, confusingly (known as Julia in the film) is played by 24-year-old Claire Forlani. She was, briefly, Sean Connery's angry confused daughter in The Rock, the forlorn girlfriend in Basquiat, and again in The Last Time I Committed Suicide. Since filming Basil she has taken stronger roles, most recently as Susan Parrish in Meet Joe Black (1998). Basil himself is played by Jared Leto, a 25-year-old American whose only previous sighting in the UK has been as Beck in How To Make An American Quilt but he is better known in North America as a soap star.

Sir Derek Jacobi, veteran of I, Claudius and Cadfael on television and Hamlet and Looking for Richard plays his autocratic father. He was also Arthur Clennam in the 1988 version of Little Dorrit. Mr Sherwin, Julia's father, is played by David Ross and Crispin Bonham-Carter plays Basil's brother Ralph.

The plot of the film

The movie begins with a very long section about Basil's young life which is not in Basil but which explains the background to his family life. It also includes a contrived meeting between Mannion and Basil which leads to Mannion introducing him to Julia (Margaret). He courts Julia and she responds with contempt and greed and their relationship is played out under the watchful eye of Mannion. They marry with her father's rather mercenary blessing. Mannion and Julia have had a secret affair for some time and Basil catches them in bed in Mannion's rooms. He brutally attacks Mannion and leaves him for dead. In fact he is left with a face so disfigured that he never looks at himself again. Basil is rejected by his father and is reduced to working for his bread. Mannion follows him and eventually reveals that he wanted revenge on Basil's family because his brother Ralph had seduced Mannion's sister and she had died in an abortion attempt. There is a showdown on the cliffs and Mannion, having seen the state of his face, throws himself off to his death. Basil is reconciled to his father and sister.

It is a watchable and almost believable film. Although the plot does not follow the book precisely it is a credible film version of it and the scenes of victorian London are lively and real. But several key parts of the book - which would have had huge dramatic impact - are missing such as the moment when Basil falls in love with Margaret Sherwin on the omnibus and the scene where basil's father tears the page out of the family bible to dismiss Basil from the family. The final scene on the cornish cliffs is changed so that Mannion commits suicide rather than falls to his death while fighting Basil. Basil's father has had an addition to his character - he is rather free sexually - and Basil's sister Clara is turned into an adopted child who is not the supporting and loving sister of the book.

Derek Jacobi is excellent as Basil's father, Clair Forlani is sutiably beautiful and disdainful, her father is played well by David Ross showing all the greed of the nouveau riche, and Christian Slater makes a fine villain. Jared Leto's acting lets the whole production down. The photography and sets are excellent, though the time and effort to travel by coach between Cornwall and London in the early 19C is taken rather lightly.

The Novel

Basil was published in 1852. It followed his first published novel Antonina (1850), a historical romance about the fall of Rome, and Mr Wray's Cash Box (1851), a slight comic novella aimed at the Christmas market. An earlier attempt at novel writing IolanI a romance set in Polynesia before Europeans arrived, was never published in his lifetime. Basil shocked contemporary critics and began a long antagonism between Collins and his reviewers, feelings that were not shared by his millions of readers.

Reference:

http://www.deadline.demon.co.uk/wilkie/basil.htm