Basil (1998)

Big-screen favorites Christian Slater, Jared Leto, and Claire Forlani are the hot stars in this powerful story of passion, betrayal, and revenge! Basil is a sheltered young Englishman willing to risk his fortune and place in society for the friendship of a commoner and love of a strikingly beautiful -- but darkly mysterious -- woman. His newfound happiness is shattered, however, with the devastating discovery that all he holds dear is a cruel deception! With a terrific cast giving truly memorable performances -- you'll be riveted as the intrigue only deepens when Basil faces his family's darkest secrets while coming to terms with his past!

Basil

This is dramatic and cruel story about naïve heir Basil (Jared Leto), who felt in love with one mysterious woman Julia (Claire Forlani) and married her. In fact she was in love with man John Mannion (Christian Slater), who had friendship with Basil. This story is passionate and treacherous.
February 10, 2008

Give Wilkie Collins a Break

As an avid fan of Wilkie Collins, I knew from the start that this film would have a tragic twist. I was not disappointed! Although the film was not a blockbuster and certainly not a typical Victorian love story, it is a lavish production and contained enough twists and turns to keep me guessing to the end. It was worth the price to watch Christian Slater, Clare Forlani and Jared Leto. If any of the aforementioned actors lacked luster on the screen, I suspect it had more to do with the script's variance from Wilkie Collins novel. All in all, for period drama affecionados with an open mind, this film would be a welcome addition in any video library. January 16, 2008

Crazy bad film

I wanted bad to like this movie. I am a huge fan of Slater and Forlani. I saw this movie when it came out (I was 14) and was confused by it and didn't particularly like it, but obviously didn't form a solid opinion of the movie because I rented it again this week to see why I still didn't have an opinion of it. Now I know why.

The "mystery" of the film (spoilers below) has very little to do with the movie itself. I read in another review that this film is about "revenge gone wrong" when in fact this film is about revenge never happening! The movie provides an endless list of questions that are never answered.

Why is Basil so ridiculously gullible and naive to the point where you're just plain embarrassed for him?

How more could the director possibly spoil his own "mystery" with the cut rope near the beginning and Julia's constant hesitations with Basil?

How pathetic is John Manyan's character (big spoiler alert here) to spend his entire life building up to something only to completely give up on it at the last moment for no obvious reason? Nice justice he brought his father.

Why do Basil and his brother keep in no contact whatsoever? They appear to be very close early on, and then when sent away, Basil makes no attempts to reconnect with his brother at all. Clearly he has a desire for a male friend- as this movie takes great pains to point out in his strong and quickly made friendship with John Manyan. Travel is no issue for Basil- he makes excuses to go to London to see Manyan. Why would he not go see his brother?

Can Basil's father be any more one-dimensional and any less convincing as a character? We keep getting this stupid line about "such-and-such knows their place" trying to label him as being so stuck up it's the only thing we know about him. It is so unbelievable that a character who is only identifiable by one characteristic should completely change who he is at the end of the film (especially when this has happened off-screen).

What are we supposed to feel for the father at the end of the film other than the fact that he ruined many lives and no one took their revenge on him? He gets away with what he has done, and the audience is supposed to somehow find this a "happy ending".

Nothing is resolved, and we don't understand several of the main characters. Clara, the only sympathetic character in the film, never once challenges her foster father's cruelness, and so transitions to just pathetic. At least Manyan had ambition, though unrealized.

I actually laughed when the credits rolled after Basil said he wanted to stay and live with his dad.

What a waste of everyone's time and talent. January 16, 2008

Certainly not up to the standard Bharadwaj set with her previous film, but not bad.

Basil (Radha Bharadwaj, 1998)

After Closetland, I considered Radha Bharadwaj one of the best directors I'd ever seen put images on film. Then... nothing. For seven years, nothing. And then came Basil, about as different a film from Closetland as it is possible to imagine. (And there has been nothing in the nine years since.)

Based on a Wilkie Collins novel, Basil is the story of, well, Basil (Jared Leto), an aristocrat whose father (Derek Jacobi, whose character is never named in the film) is an overbearing, class-obsessed bonehead. We see some stuff about Basil's young (read: played by someone younger than Jared Leto) life, then get into the meat of the story-- Basil, whose only friend is foundling Clara (Rachel Pickup), taken in by Basil's family at a young age, is rescued after injuring his ankle in a fall by John Mannion (Christian Slater). The two of them become close, and Basil ends up falling for Julia (Claire Forlani), the daughter of Mannion's employer. Julia may not be so sure about Basil, but she certainly likes his money...

The most interesting thing about Basil is Clara, who is an artifact of an earlier time; while Basil (and his contemporaries in so many Victorian novels) are off pursuing the women who are bad for them, there's the lovely childhood friend waiting at home who these guys simply never notice. In a rather Tristan-and-Isolde move, we even get blonde Clara and raven-haired Julia. Oh, the symbolism. By saying this, though, I don't mean to denigrate the movie, nor the novel on which it is based; this is the kind of thing that passed for melodrama in the Victorian novel. It's stupidly fun, and one has to assume Bharadwaj offers the heavy-handed symbolism in the spirit in which it was originally offered.

More problematic is listening to both Leto and Slater try and fumble their ways through their particular accents. Oddly, it's Leto, who at the time was a rising star (he was still a couple of years away from the trilogy of films that would make his name-- The Thin Red Line, Fight Club, and Requiem for a Dream), who seems to have less of a problem with it; he dons the accent, and the mantle, of the aristocrat without terribly much trouble, while established star Slater never quite manages to play the lower-class wage slave convincingly. (And, while it's impossible to give details without major spoilers, yes, I do realize there's a reason for that, but all that does is shift the blame from one party to another.)

Still, minor casting problems aside, I enjoyed this for what it is; a drama of manners, a lightweight mystery. I've never been a big fan of the Merchant-Ivory Victorian costume dramas that were all the rage for a decade or so; maybe, as it turns out, I just needed another director at the helm. *** ½
December 20, 2007

Surprised

I haven't read this Wilkie Collins story, but I found it intriguing and for the most part enjoyed it. The one problem I had was with Christian Slater. I am a big fan of Slater but this was a terrible miscast. Instead of a turn-of-the-century English man, he was obviously a modern American. Just didn't work - that surprised me.

I think anyone who enjoys period-piece dramas will enjoy this film, though. September 23, 2007

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