The soul of grime lives within each frame of 1987’s Withnail & I, written and directed by Bruce Robinson. Filth covers every nook and cranny of a London apartment, living creatures born out of the sink, conceived between decomposed dishware and neglect. The only thing worse is what lives outside its moulded walls, in what is left of the world before Withnail and “I.” Suddenly I don’t feel so barbaric, wiping dirty grapes on my pants, overcome with the state of my own matter.
The story goes as so: drowning in bottles of sherry, liquor, and man-made despair, two unemployed actors—Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and “I” (Paul McGann, named Marwood only in the script)—forage around London for their next drink. It isn’t curious why they claim to have come down sick with a cold, washing pills down with lighter fluid and lighter fluid down with gin. The sum of their 20s and the decade’s trials have caught up and the last 91 days of 1969 can only be survived by the faithfulness of a co-dependent friendship.
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By looking for a change of scenery, or maybe a cure to their depressive ailments, the pair look to an aristocratic family member for an impromptu countryside escape. There they will rid themselves of sorrow and very likely themselves.
The plot of the film is hardly what makes Withnail & I as special as it is. Little details of their lifestyle is a cherry on top of a deliciously rotten cake. Its comedy comes from every direction, pithy poetry in every exchange, and set within their own personal Shakespeare play. Its cult status is nothing if not well deserved. Umpteen pages can be compiled for a list of the greatest-ever movie lines, which find dozens upon dozens of new turns of phrase for my everyday vocabulary: “We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now,” “I’m a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum,” “These are the sort of windows faces look in at,” “My thumbs have gone weird.” Wit oozes out their pores amongst 80 proof alcohol.
Based on Robinson’s real life through the ’60s shared with late friend Vivian MacKerrell, he weaves a story made for only the sick and spiteful members of society. Withnail & I is a tribute not only to MacKerell but to the greater landscape of anguish.
Ending the original script, in its own bleak spirit, it is written that Withnail takes his own life after losing Marwood to the arts, and leaving him stranded to his own devices in the London rain. In its film realization, it is just as fateful without the conclusive finale. Instead, in Withnail fashion, he cries out a Hamlet soliloquy for sky’s clouds to cry to and all bystanders to scoff at. He has made an enemy of his future. Farewell, 1969. Farewell.