GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Alfonso Cuaron's film adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations, written in 1861.
Great expectations is, together with David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, one of Dickens' major works.
The American film adaptation, even if lacklustre for it simplifies the original book to just an easthetic approach, lets us meet Dickens' characters and plot, which contribute to the formation of British young generations.
Original plot and main characters:
Charles Dickens, in order to help the newspaper in which he usually published his serials, decides to weekly write Great Expectations. Thus the book appeared initially in serial form in All The Year Round between 1860 and 1861.
The main character is young Philip Pirrip (known as Pip), orphan boy living with his unpleasant sister and her friendly blacksmith husband Joe. A crucial event in his personnal developement is his meeting with Miss Havisham and her daughter Estella, who tortures his heart. Another important figure is the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, who Pip helps.
Pip's aspiration is to become a gentleman despite his humble origin, and unexpectedly he achieves his dream when he receives an anonymous fund of wealth.
In London, Pip is deceited by Estella, who marries another man. But she is eventually by her husband and runs to Pip. The mystery of his anonymous benefactor is also solved, for it turns out to have been Magwitch.
Finegal Bell, our Philip Pirrip, is played by Ethan Hawke (well remembered for his role in Dead Poets Society, 1989). But not only the main character's name has been changed!! Gwyneth Paltrow stars Estella, the contemptuous young lady. In both cases, the actors are rather unconvincing because they are constantly compared to the two big names of the film: Anne Bancroft and Robert de Niro.
Anne Bancrof, unrecognizable with that ageing make-up, plays Miss Dinsmoor, Dickens' Miss havisham, who takes revenge on men through Estella. Robert de Niro appears fist as convict, later as demiurge, before completely disappearing as in the book. His character has also changed name, for Abel Magwitch is here called Lustik.
An adapatation which moves the action in terms of time and space:
The adaptators of Dickens' novel have decided to move the action in a more recent time and on the West coast of Florida and New York.
The hero's developement and all his growing experiences are still central to the main plot. In this, the first-person narration is very effective. "Will I be the hero of my life?" the story will tell. Or even better "I will narrate the story as I remember it". And that is precisely what the adaptators of the novel tried to reproduce in the film.
A criticism on artists:
The film gets advantatge of the fact, absolutely invented by the film adaptators, that Pip-Fin becomes a painter and so the New-York artistic world is satirized. The problem is that this changing of scenario takes us away from Dickens' main idea: how a man can rule his own world (even if Pip-Fin sais "New-York and Paris! Holding out my hand and all both mine!!").
Nothing to do with the initiatic power of the novel. This easthetic adaptation has empowered form over content, like Gwyneth Paltrow's image, so unreal and sophisticated that she looks like a puppet.
The reference adaptation: David Lean's Great Expectations
After filming Brief Encounters in 1945, David Lean adapted Dickens' novel and became "a great director". Later on, he would make The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and lawrence of Arabia (1962). His film Great Expectations was released in 1946, and was considered to be a good and convincing adaptation of Dickens's ideas. No transpositions, no simplifications and, as in the original story, the main plot is forged with parallel minor developements and at the ned all are joint together.