Matthew Goode initially had reservations about the big-screen revisiting of Brideshead Revisited.

The script for the new adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel about clashes of religion and social class in 1920s England made some key changes from the source material.

And even after being cast in the lead role, it took awhile for Goode to become convinced.

Miramax Films

From left, Matthew Goode, Hayley Atwell and Ben Whishaw are  shown in a scene from Brideshead Revisited.

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“When I first read the script, it seemed so cold without some of that beautiful prose that Waugh wrote. So I was a little disconcerted,” Goode said during a recent promotional stop in Dallas. “I’ve always been a purist when it comes to a novel, so I had reticence, but it’s not my place. Ultimately, you do your job and put your trust in the director. Early on, we could see we had it right.”

In Brideshead, Goode plays Charles Ryder, who spends a summer visiting the ancestral home of gay college friend Sebastian (Ben Whishaw), where Charles, a middle-class atheist, becomes infatuated with the Marchmain family’s glamorous, aristocratic and staunchly Catholic lifestyle.

After becoming charmed by Sebastian, Charles is equally taken by his sophisticated sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell), developing a further obsession that eventually winds up at odds with the family matriarch (Emma Thompson) over status and beliefs.

“It’s a desperate search for a true understanding of what love is and where he fits in the world,” Goode said. “He is ambitious, as most young men are. There’s a time when he starts to social climb. But it’s about hunting for the one place where he’s truly been happy, and this long, idyllic summer really has an effect on him.”

Eventually, Goode (Match Point) gained confidence in the material by trusting the vision of director Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane ), who eased his concerns about turning the story into more of a romantic epic than the novel allowed, with Charles sometimes feeling caught in the middle of a family of flamboyant eccentrics.

“I was worried that I might get acted off the screen by people giving much larger performances, but now I think I’m all right. It worked,” said Goode, who was especially skeptical of the screenplay’s introduction of his romance with Julia at an early stage.

“I was concerned, but they needed to get her into the story a little earlier than she was in the novel,” he said of the changes, which were approved by the Waugh estate. “It makes Charles seem cold and ambitious a little earlier than he is in the novel. But it also adds an interesting dynamic.”

The book most famously was made into a 12-hour British television miniseries in 1981, with a young Jeremy Irons playing Charles in a star-making performance.

In this version, adapted by screenwriters Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland) and Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones’s Diary), the relationships between Charles and each of the Marchmain siblings are given more emphasis while some of the periphery characters and themes are downgraded in importance.

Goode, 30, hopes the new Brideshead will please Waugh purists and resonate with a new generation of audiences.

“It was a tremendous challenge, especially truncating that story down,” Goode said. “It’s not a vast novel, but it certainly has an epic scope to it. The book was always our bible. We were constantly referring back to it. I needed to look at that prose, just to try and remember how you’re going to place it.”

For the sequences at Brideshead, the filmmakers shot at majestic Castle Howard in Yorkshire, the same castle used for the miniseries more than a quarter century ago. Some of the college scenes were filmed at Oxford.

Brideshead Revisited is currently playing at the Magnolia in Dallas and the Angelika Film Center in Plano.

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com.