Oliver Twist
2/5 Stars
Starring: Ben Kinglsey, Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman, Harry Eden
Directed by: Roman Polanski

By now, everyone knows the story of the orphan boy Oliver Twist: mom dies at birth, sent off to the workhouse, “Please, Sir, I want some more,” etc. The characters were practically stereotypes before they were even conceived-from Oliver’s doe-eyed innocence to the Artful Dodger’s streetwise self-assurance. Other adaptations of the story have focused on a less mature demographic, like 1988′s inimitable “Oliver & Company,” which wisely eschewed Dickens’ heavy-handed Victorian morality for lovable kittens and Billy Joel tunes.

One might expect Polanski’s adaptation of “Oliver Twist” to be darker and more disturbing than Walt Disney’s vision. and it is, to a point. But instead of diving into the seedy alleyways and exposing the sinister desires of the characters the way you’d expect, Polanski offers a film that is largely true to the tone of the novel-which is possibly its greatest flaw. Save the well-executed (but not particularly novel) art direction, you’ve heard this story a million times, and unless you consider yourself a true Dickensonian, there is absolutely no reason to hear it again.

Barney Clark makes his big-screen debut as the young Oliver and plays the role adequately. Oliver is more or less a blank slate throughout the movie-he is quiet, weak and typically ends up being manipulated by the people around him for their personal gain. More than anything else, however, he is a mirror for the characters around him, unambiguously exposing their moral state depending on whether they see him as innocent or insolent. Most characters come down on one side or the other and are typically rewarded (or punished) accordingly by the end of the movie.

The one notable exception to this rule is Ben Kingsley’s portrayal of Fagin, the feeble criminal mastermind behind the gang of miscreant pickpockets. Fagin vacillates between an all-consuming greed that drives him to mistreat Oliver and a genuine affection for the boy that few characters in the movie display. He plays the character with such convincing pathos that it’s easy to care more about him than it is for the comparatively boring Oliver. When the boy visits Fagin in his cell before his impending execution in the last few minutes of the movie, the viewer’s pity for Fagin easily displaces any happiness or relief one might feel at Oliver’s success, muting the already-weak resolution of the story and leaving the audience to wonder why the cameras were following Oliver in the first place.

Popularity: unranked [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.