The question is not whether the remake of Evelyn Waugh's 1945 book is as good, as rich, as deeply satisfying as the landmark 11-hour British TV series of the same name that aired here in 1982, launching the career of a then-unknown Jeremy Irons. How could it be? Even at more than two hours, this feature-length version of Waugh's tale of homosexuality, class envy, God and redemption must highlight certain themes, de-emphasizing -- or eliminating -- others for the sake of brevity.

And so it is that director Julian Jarrold's take on the idea-rich novel has become, in screenwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies's tight retelling, a more narrowly focused story of a love triangle. At least primarily.

At the apex stands Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), a middle-class English atheist who becomes infatuated with the family of Sebastian Flyte (Ben Wishaw), an alcoholic, gay Catholic aristocrat who befriends Charles while the two are students at Oxford. In the other corner is Sebastian's sister Julia (Hayley Atwell), a morose beauty with whom Charles begins a doomed affair while the three are traveling in Venice.

Stop right there, purists will say. That isn't the way it happened in the book.

Well, no, it isn't exactly. But since when did it become illegal for film adaptations to tweak their literary source material? Himself a late convert to Catholicism, Waugh wrote the story from an outsider's view of that religion's power to heal -- and harm -- its adherents. To a large degree, that story remains intact, thanks chiefly to Emma Thompson's chilly turn as Sebastian and Julia's mother, Lady Marchmain, a sort of Mommie Dearest with a stiff upper lip.

The real question is whether the film moves the "Brideshead" ball down the playing field in any meaningful way since the acclaimed miniseries. And I'd have to say that it doesn't so much advance it as it shrinks it into a golf-ball-size nugget.

Still hard-hitting and dense, it's a film whose ideal audience consists of younger viewers who haven't seen the TV series and who therefore have nothing to compare it to (other than the book, which despite changes holds up better than some diehard fans might have you believe). But for that generation old enough to have seen the miniseries on PBS -- or patient enough to have subsequently sat through it on video or DVD -- the experience might inevitably feel a little like an echo: only faintly reminiscent of the original's strong, clear tones.

-- Michael O'Sullivan (July 25, 2008)

Contains scenes of love-making and some mature themes. At area theaters.