MovieChat Forums > Brideshead Revisited (1982) Discussion > SOMEBODY APPRECIATES CHARLES RYDER

SOMEBODY APPRECIATES CHARLES RYDER


@People who claim that he is "vanilla":

From the Comments Section below the YouTube video of the TV series:

"I call [Anthony Blanche] comfortable because he knows who he is. His flamboyancy is his way of showing he won't back down and hide his alliegance to 'the love that dare not speak its name'. Charles, my favourite character, is very conflicted. For all of his return to heterosexuality, deep within him is his love and desire for Sebastian which colours and informs his relationships.I point to his marriage- a wife and children he cannot love.Julia - a sad, doomed effort with a heterosexual Sebastian."

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I LOVE Charles Ryder... He SEES. He sees art, he sees beauty, and eventually he finds some of that beauty within Catholicism. He's an active observer. Since people are confessing their religions all over this board, I'll state that I'm an atheist, was an atheist when I first watched this... yet I do not reject his conversion, it does not disturb me. He is an Artist, truly, it is what Anthony Blanche sees in him, and to comfort my sacrilegious self I consider it as a system of aesthetics.
(And I am grateful that the series does not include any long shots - or none at all? - of a crucifix. THAT freaks me out.)

Otherwise I can stay at a distance and see that this is what Charles wants - when Sebastian says, "Oh yes, I believe..." and Charles said "WHY?" (not a direct quote ;) "Because they are lovely ideas."
Charles said "You can't believe in things because they are lovely ideas."
"Oh, but I do." Sebastian says.

Charles wants that and gets it.

That's one of many odes to Charles I could write.

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