It’s been 35 years since Withnail and I was released in Britain. Described as “the ultimate cult film,” the seventh greatest comedy film of all-time, and even as Will Arnett’s favourite movie, it’s one of those cult films you can imagine film bros love. Set at the end of the hippie era, 1969, Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the unnamed “I” (Marwood in the screenplay — played by Paul McGann) are largely unsuccessful and unapologetically lazy actors who live in a disgusting little flat covered in books, dirty dishes, empty wine bottles and cigarette butts. Their only regular visitor is their drug dealer, Danny (Ralph Brown), who sports a ridiculous lisp and at the end of the film constructs a huge “Camberwell Carrot” joint to get outrageously high with. Nothing really happens, actually. But that’s not the point.
Writers, filmmakers, and critics alike love to pontificate about the plight of the misanthropic artist. The word misanthrope comes from the Greek misanthropos, or “hating humankind,” and was very likely brought to English by Moliere’s 1666 play Le Misanthrope. The mis- or “hate” part also belongs to the word “misogynist,” which misanthropes usually are. It seems a very masculine thing to make hating society and everyone in it into a personality trait. You’ve also gotta be pretty self-important to want to make art in a world that increasingly rejects doing things just for the sake of doing them.
I’ve always found it a bit hard to make the leap to relate to protagonists like Withnail. Somehow, I still end up seeing them everywhere: James Joyce’s Portrait of a Young Man made an appearance in my university Modernist Lit course reading list, I can’t escape the appeal of Richard Roxburgh’s charmingly terrible Cleaver Greene in Rake, Fight Club was an ill-advised choice of film for my lockdown brain, and even the greasy Dylan Moran in Black Books is a dear favourite of mine. All the characters in these works are decidedly not queer in their approach: they either love women, love alcohol, or love violence (sometimes all of the above), in a way that feels toxically masculine.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate society too, and I’m also probably a bit insufferable. But I don’t think I (or my fellow girls, gays and theys) would ever have permission to be this decidedly and simultaneously pretentious, insufferable, alcoholic, independent yet codependent, desperate, funny, odd, and poor. Withnail and the unnamed character “I” are always complaining. They squabble about doing the dishes in the beginning of the film, frighten themselves into thinking there is a rodent of some kind in the sink, and then decide to go and get drunk to stay warm. Everything they do is motivated by an attempt to get away from themselves. Their poverty is clearly chosen, they choose to suffer (presumably on account of their art, but this much is never made obvious), and can always manage to pay for their beers. They reach out to a rich uncle Monty, who is gay and makes an odd little speech about carrots, so they can borrow his house in the countryside for a holiday later described as “a mistake.” Withnail yells to a policeman that his cousin is a QC (Queen’s Counsel — a barrister of the highest order). Withnail is entitled, demanding the best wine, meat, and drugs, like he knows what is “good” and has chosen which of those “good” things he wants to participate in, and which he wants to rail against.
Arguably the climax of the film is when Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), “the terrible cunt,” arrives at the country house to visit the boys as they struggle to live a short rural life. He is infatuated with Marwood and makes numerous attempts to sleep with him. The most overt attempt culminates in Marwood telling Monty that he and Withnail are in love, and have slept in the same bed for years, but Withnail is too ashamed to tell this to Monty. The oddest thing is, you almost believe Marwood, despite the very next scene in which he tells Withnail: “I have just narrowly avoided having a buggering and have come in here with the express intention of wishing one upon you.” In previous scenes, Withnail and Marwood are slightly too aware of the possibility of being hate-crimed; a cantankerous pub patron calls Marwood a “ponce” because of his “perfumed boots,” and they both scramble out the door in the way that only a couple of twinks can.
Misanthropic artists who are women do exist — they just don’t exist in the way that Withnail and Marwood do. In Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the protagonist chooses to duck the ills of the world by hibernating. Fresh from college, she inherits a sum of money, then chooses to spend a year living off her unemployment benefits — but she learns something in the process. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar follows Esther Greenwood’s travels to New York to guest edit a magazine. On her final night in New York, she is almost raped by a man she went on a blind date with. Like Plath herself, she eventually hides in a small space and suicides. Fleabag also deserves a mention — but she doesn’t seem to be overtly an artist, and the story there is really about love between two sisters.
Worth also noting that misanthropic, brooding artists are usually white. One exception is The Incredible Jessica James (2017), written and directed by James C. Strouse. Jessica is a Black playwright who has been repeatedly rejected. The tone of the film is wildly different from Withnail and I, being American, and billed as a romantic comedy. It’s brightly coloured — not awash with whites, yellows and grays — and filled with upbeat, poppy music. It’s still somewhat in the vein of Withnail, but Jessica is never allowed to be lazy. She is driven, has a clear goal, helps children (and makes money) by teaching them how to act, and is also chasing her married love interest. She’s definitely allowed to be problematic, but she’s not allowed to be disgusting, poor, alcoholic, or too desperate. She’s also not really allowed to be Black. Interestingly, one critic commended the film’s “colorblind approach” and another critic described Jessica as “cold and unpleasant to others.” I wonder what that same critic thought of Withnail.
That’s not to say that Withnail and I is necessarily a bad film. It is an interesting, witty, at times very funny, and no doubt accurate depiction of life as an unsuccessful actor in 1960’s London. The problem is, even 35 years later, we still haven’t managed to find a way to depict anyone who’s not already rich, white or a man as a starving, flawed artist in film just as disgustingly lazy as Withnail and Marwood. The film laments the end of the hippie era, but fails to recognise the place of those who came before and fought so hard to break barriers, allowing people like Withnail to ride on their coat-tails and dress themselves up as poor for the sake of their art, or their politics, with the safety net of rich family members like Uncle Monty. Not everyone can go “on holiday by mistake,” and still less people have the time or money to make movies about it. Withnail and Marwood even use the guise of queerness, not ever outright rejecting it, as something that makes them more “arty.” And still, even up to 2014, film critics in the Guardian praise Withnail and I for its droll depiction of the “artist type” — perhaps this is just another reason why we need more diverse arts critics, so we can praise the lazy versions of ourselves we wish we saw on screen.
