Movie Reviews

Great Expectations

28 Mar 1998

At first glance, Great Expectations might seem like an attempt to modernise Charles Dickens’ classic novel, just as William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet gave street cred to the Bard in 1996.

In truth, it has more in common with West Side Story, another Romeo and Juliet update. The story is still there, but most characters have been renamed, and the dialogue has been updated along with the setting.

A pity. Great Expectations was a great novel - and the story is still powerful, even when tampered with by film-makers - but Dickens (like Shakespeare) also gave us some immortal prose and wonderful characters. Mitch Glazer’s script, with up-to-date lines like “Her room smelt of dead flowers and cat’s piss”, just isn’t the same.

This approach makes some sense. The best-known movie version of this novel - directed by David Lean in 1946 - is rightly considered a masterpiece. Why risk comparison?

Instead, we have something very different. Pip, the hero, is renamed Finnegan Bell, relocated to the Florida coast and turned into a gifted artist. Magwitch, the convict he meets as a child, is also renamed and - with foolproof casting - played by Robert De Niro. Sadly, De Niro doesn’t have much to do, as Magwitch is little more than a cameo role.

The film prefers to focus on the romance between Finnegan and the cool, haughty Estella, played as adults by Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. The romance is highly erotic - which, nowadays, is not so much offensive as tedious. They spend so much time on the physical side of their relationship that Finnegan seems not so much a fool in love as an obsessed sex maniac. Because he is so self-absorbed - finding fame, but not fulfilment, in the pretentious New York art scene - and she is so aloof, they are not the most likable pair.

Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron delivers an attractive film, with effective music. The cast does a fine job, especially Anne Bancroft as the crazy Ms Dinsmoor (previously Miss Havisham) and Chris Cooper as the simple, unaffected Joe.

Nonetheless, one can’t help wondering why the title wasn’t changed along with the names. With or without the raunchy moments, it’s simply not Dickens.