Richard E Grant’s renaissance is a joy to watch – and it all started with Withnail and I | Film

IIf you like what Richard E Grant is doing now – in shows like The Franchise and movies like Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Saltburn – you really should see where it all began: the 1987 flop turned cult classic Withnail and I. Grant delivers a tour de force comic performance as an alcoholic unemployed actor living with his best mate in a squalid London flat at . late 1969, who goes on holiday in the countryside by mistake.

It’s more fun than it sounds. In fact, Withnail and I is a top shelf comedy with some of the finest lines and line readings available to mankind. (A personal favorite: “This place has become impossible. Perpetual rain, freezing cold, and now a madman hunting outside with eels.”)

It didn’t play out this way at first: like many cult classics, Withnail and I bombed at the box office and was generally poorly reviewed, gradually building a fandom—in this case aided by the spread of VCR technology. In particular, it went like a secret handshake through students – who recognized simpatico spirits and familiar dilemmas – which I suppose is how I discovered it in the early 2000s.

I was familiar with the title and the cover – it was a staple of video stores in the 90s – but I had somehow assumed it was too rare for my unrefined palate; only to discover, in my chaotic uni years, that it was a spiritual homecoming of sorts. In my soul, I’m probably forever pottering around the muddy landscape of Withnail and I, in search of beauty (and potatoes) while surrounded by madmen wielding eels.

Circa 2000, Withnail and I was probably my first encounter with Grant, but in retrospect I realize it cemented the qualities that have defined his best roles in the decades since: sharp-tongued patrician hauteur mixed with manic energy and childlike glee. It’s also a master class in playing drunk – all the more miraculous he is a lifelong tee totaler.

Grant plays Withnail (pronounced “WITH-null” in the film, though oddly enough you’ll only hear fans – even Brits – pronounce the film’s title “WITH-NAIL”), an upper-crust scumbag with a world-class knack for drink and drugs, and a more doubtful talent for acting; in his own estimation, “a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum”, thanks to his inability to secure an audition.

The titular “I” (played by Paul McGann) is Marwood: middle-class, biblically handsome and also an actor, albeit a bit more successful – not only has he secured an audition, he’s about to get a callback. Like Withnail, Marwood is a prodigious drinker, but he is less connoisseur of psychotropics than his friend; more of a dilettante. The film opens on him in the midst of a panic attack, surrounded by souvenirs from a 60-hour bender of speed and booze.

This is ostensibly Marwood’s story, but from the moment Grant enters the picture around five minutes in – digging into his hangover, wrapped in tailored tweed and brandishing a wine bottle – it’s clear he’s going to steal the show. “I have some extremely disturbing news,” he informs Marwood. “We just ran out of wine.”

Writer-director Bruce Robinson based the film on his semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, which draws on his years as a struggling actor living in Camden. This is not the stylish, swinging London of the 60s often depicted on film, but rather a down-and-out working-class melting pot at the end of a decade of dissolution. The hangover is a bastard.

Adept at avoiding reality, Marwood and Withnail settle in the countryside: a Lake District cottage owned by Withnail’s wealthy uncle Monty (the irrepressible Richard Griffiths), himself a failed thesp. Monty is also a bit of a failed homosexual and, as we discover, Withnail has secured the keys to the cottage by offering his unsuspecting friend as an amuse-bouche. When Monty arrives at the cabin to claim his prize, the wheels of the already rickety wagon fall off.

None of this plays out the way you’d expect, which is really the strength of all the best movies and certainly the best comedies. Writing from his own life – including his experiences with predators, older gay men in the clubs and casting couches in 60s London – Robinson is humanistic, even tender and never smooth. Monty is no monster. Even Withnail, an example of patrician rights, is more damaged child than diabolical fiend. And Marwood is no angel: we come to see that he has an exploitative instinct as ruthless as his friend’s.

Withnail and I is first and foremost a comedy, but the film’s enduring emotional power lies in its devastating portrayal of a friendship turned from intoxicating high to melancholic low. Marwood, as ambitious as his friend but more pragmatic, moves on – leaving us with the ambivalent sense that this is both necessary and a betrayal. But as with all trips, don’t let the inevitable comedown deter you from taking the sublime and often ridiculous journey.

• Withnail and I is available to stream on Prime Video in Australia, Channel 4 in the UK and Max in the US. Click here for more recommendations of what to stream in Australia