Shattered Expectations

My roomie told me of the latest entrant in the English movies folder of 31.2.40, the lifeline of IIIT-A, if I may say so. An adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, the Great Expectation, released in 1998 had finally arrived! Well I am no fan of the book; in fact I found each one of its characters disgustingly irritating, except that of Joe may be. We were made to go through each one of its 300 odd pages, memorizing extracts from the everyday life of the motley group of confused souls, where most of them didn’t have a clue to what they were up to! On top of that, and I still don’t know how we were supposed to manage understanding the “depth”, the quintessence of human nature and its “beautiful” portrayal in the play. Aahh! Pip’s incessant declarations of love, and the ridicule he was subjecting his own self and those who cared, to get a teensy weensy more of her attention, to be just a wee bit more worth of the “Goddess”! Sometimes you felt bad for the poor chap. But then this was an age old story, the naïve plot was pretty believable, with unforgettable characters who made you feel like there could exist a loony like Ms.Havisham, and Dickens did a great job in weaving the story together. Few of the scenes like the showdown between Ms.Havisham and Estella; the one where Pip tells Ms.Havisham that he has a broken heart are my all time favorites. The narrative has been so interestingly written, the characters so well-etched out that you actually start believing in those whackos-each one of them! Hatred for the book was more out of the contempt for it being part of the school curriculum rather than the book itself. Imagine the plight of students being made to go through those nerve-wrecking, endless chapters describing Pip’s love for Estella.
Anyways the point here I am trying to make is not about the book but about the sad adaptations of classics the celluloid churns out now-a-days. I watched the movie today afternoon after the prolonged mid-semester examinations of college were finally officially over! It started out well, with a brilliant revamp of the swamps scene between Robert diNero (need I say more??) and the child actor. Joe and the revised character of Mrs. Joe(they gave her a damned name!!) were disappointing to say the least, your heart doesn’t wring for Joe when he come visiting Pip in the city cause there hasn’t been shown enough or rather any bonding between them. They have conveniently removed such fine and memorable characters like Pumblechook and Wemmick, reduced Jaggers to a “spider-man”, totally killed Estella’s character, converted the uptight Mrs. Joe to a mere adulteress who runs away from home and unlike the original where the ending where Pip’s character finally seems to have matured and leaves the reader thinking, the movie actually has a happy ending! Relationships which are the major focal point of the novel have taken a backseat in this “modern”, chic version of the classic, taken over by sexuality, and ohh not to forget the green colour(for those who’ve been sane enough not to watch the movie, for some strange reason, unrevealed through out the narrative, Ms Havisham and Estella have some mystic fascination with green!). No attempt has been made to etch out well Pip’s childhood, his suffering, the reassurance he got from Joe. No all this isn’t important, what actually the director thought was worth the precious 90 minutes, was Hank Azaria as Estella’s beau, who should have been rightfully kept away from the plot. What more…the meteoric rise to success, and the “smooth” transition to a snob is rather too abrupt, and obviously the revelation of the benefactor( and the waste of an actor of the stature of Robert DiNero) was two penny worth for the scriptwriters. To top it all, unarguably the best scene of the novel, when Estella tells Ms. Havisham “I am what you made me”, has been omitted. Unfortunately confrontations in the play were something the director seems to be totally oblivious too. One thing they’ve spent lavishly on is the re-construction of the great ruin of a mansion, Havisham house, the visualization of which had pretty frequent in times when I read the book, so that was a treat! But then I fail to understand why they stuck to the all-still theory when Ms. Havisham herself had been given a face-lift, occasionally stepped out, loved to wear makeup (!), had a whole range of (green) designer wear and was dancing on salsa tunes, instead of being the actual scary, grumpy ol’ hag who was only a nocturnal feature in the original novel.
A thorough disappointment, a frustratingly poor adaptation of a classic was what the new Great Expectations was all about. Rather than capitalizing on the forte of the novel- the characterizations and the narrative, the makers have chosen just to give a cheesy renovation to the long-drawn love of Pip for Estella (the haughtiness totally missing in Gwyneth Paltrow throughout), which though instrumental in shaping the character of the protagonist wasn’t the only thing that warrants attention.
My advice is, stay away from this mediocre make.