Going Twenty: Great Expectations

   How do you do, 

  I have a friend in college who is turning 20 this year. I also remembered that Dawson's Creek and That 70's Show also turn twenty. Given that 1998 was quite a good year for classic movies (even if it wasn't exactly the best of years), I figured it'd be interesting to have a series of reviews on the movies that are turning twenty. They won't be in the Review and Commentary sort, but be a brief analysis to the film or some thoughts concerning it. They will be posted once on each month, so it will all be covered within a year.

   For January, we start with Great Expectations. Starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, along with an all star cast that includes Chris Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Anne Bancroft, and Hank Azaria, Great Expectations is based on Charles Dickens' book of the same name. First published in 1861, Great Expectations is a Gothic novel in robes of Bildungsroman. In the Dickens novel, we meet the boy Pip who helps an escaped convict allude the law, stealing things from his sister and her husband in the process (his sister was older and became his guardian on the deaths of their parents, while marrying a blacksmith named Joe), and gets rewarded for it with training as a gentleman by Miss Havisham, a reclusive woman who was jilted at the altar and raising the cold, yet beautiful Estella as a man hater. Pip grows up and becomes a gentleman, which was basically a man of means in the time period, and seeks the hand of Estella, who has become a woman, but when he finds out his patron was the convict he helped escape -- well, things turn out not to be expected in the end. Though not one of the most recognized works of Charles Dickens, yet not one of the lesser known ones either, Great Expectations is the quintessential tale of social mobility in a way that Horatio Algar wrote about in the States, though not in the same opportunistic tone as the latter. Instead, Pip is tied up by the expectations around him. As a boy, he is expected to be dutiful and respectful of adults; as a youth, he is expected to be a gentleman; to women like Miss Havisham and Estella, he is expected to be the wrong guy when it comes to love, or rather wrong for any woman because he is a man, and so on. On top of that, when one has a patron who makes it possible to rise above a station the expectation is that the patron to be a person of moral character, not a man on the run from the law. It has inspired many film adaptations, most well known by David Lean in 1946.

  This movie is an updated retelling of David Lean's film from the 1940s, which is based on Charles Dicken's masterpiece novel, only it moves the setting from Early Victorian England to Modern Day New York. This transitional overhaul not only means the change in the setting, but some of the characters are renamed. For example, Pip becomes Finn and Miss Havisham becomes Nora Dismoor. Abel Magwitch, the man whom Pip rescued, is changed from an escaped convict from Australia to a mobster on the run, who even takes Pip with him to Mexico at one point. Even the mansion of Miss Havisham is replaced by Florida based "Paradiso Perduto" (literally, "paradise lost") and it looks more like a place you'd want to spend time instead of the dark and decrepit building seen in the book.

   Even if the characters are not renamed, there are some suspension of disbelief needed. Best case in point is Estella, whom the book has to be a combination of Alice from Alice In Wonderland and Wednesday Adams from The Adams Family. When she grows up, she might not be much to look at, but beauty is to the eye of the beholder. That seems to be something the movie doesn't get. So, we are to expect the beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow to be the cold Estella in this instance. For the most part, Paltrow makes her to be a sex goddess who teases her men, yet provides no sense in relief with sex. It's something some feminist would complain that the movie basically objectifies her, as if she exists only to please a man and not providing anything other than teases is a form of being cold. At the same time, there is Chris Cooper who seems cast against type as Joe. He does handle the scene of coming to the party remarkably well. Anne Bancroft may seem to try to shake off her Mrs. Robinson image, but it fails in her character being somewhat young. Hank Azaria being a rival interest for Finn works in my opinion, though some of you might disagree.
   So, the movie has many actors miscast. However, the novel's story line is strangely intact. Finn is still trained to be a gentleman while having Estella allude him upon adulthood. Finn does have a crush on her, seeing any other man near her as a rival. Yet, the plotline of Pip attempting to enter the gentry is replaced now by Finn becoming an artist. He makes pictures, including some of Estella, and he becomes popular with them. When he finds out his benefactor was the criminal he helped, he decides to study art in Paris. The connection in the novel where it turns out Abel Magwitch is the father of Estella is not in the movie, which now makes any connection between Finn and Estella to be something of a coincidence. Charles Dickens resolved the Pip-Estella love story with Estella becoming a widow and then remarrying, but not to Pip. Editors and fans actually wrote to Dickens about that and a revised ending was written instead. However, it's still left in the air if they wind up together. In the movie, Estella marries Walter and then divorces. The movie hints at Estella and Finn reconciling as they hold hands, like in the book.

   There are other strikes against Great Expectations for this updating. The modern setting is one thing, but the movie tries too hard on it. In fact, much of it is an homage to Titanic, obviously with Finn making a nude sketch of Estella in one scene, then making love to her after taking her from her fiance. At least, when Kate Winslet poses nude for her sketch, there was a meaning behind it: her character is throwing away what could amount to be an abusive marriage to a fuss budget of a tycoon heir for a fling with a penniless artist, her main act of defiance being in hanging out with him more and posing nude to explore her inner self (using the necklace her fiance gave her as a way to hurt him) before deciding to get off with her new boyfriend. Plus, that sketch had to happen because it is the clue to the said necklace in the prologue and without which the narrative would be impossible (unless the plot twist was the seeker was her grandson looking over her legacy). In Paltrow's case, I can't think of anything to the pictures other than something for the male gaze, and it's done in a teasing manner since she is never completely naked on screen. She does tease her artist on that, also, implying it's just another attempt to lead Finn on. Then, to sort of mock what Titanic had, she smokes while posing, moves around a lot, and the pictures don't even look as impressive. That and the acting does get a little wooden on a few occasions.
   Great Expectations might not be remembered well twenty years later, and its being in put into modern period causes the film to be dated (whereas the Victorian setting is timeless), it is a nice enough interpretation on how a classic might work if it was outside of its times. There we start with "Going Twenty". Tune in late in February for the next entry.