As an opening to a novel, it is hard to beat - the orphan surveying the tombstone of his parents one murky Christmas Eve, when he is set upon by a terrifying escaped convict.
And so begins Great Expectations, Dickens's novel about a young man's painful journey to self-knowledge, via a dawning realisation about how much money cannot do. The book is stuffed with memorable characters and scenes of great dramatic intensity and pathos. David Lean once made a terrific film of it, and recently there has been another attempt (Cert. 15, Director Alfonso Cuaron), starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert de Niro.
This latest attempt sets the story in contemporary Florida and New York. Could that work, I asked myself as I bought my cinema ticket? Could Dickens's story leap a century and a half and remain essentially intact?
Well, it began OK, with the convict's first appearance making the right kind of disturbing impact - photography brilliant, language appalling. The child, called Finn, not Pip, with an artistic gift, becomes the plaything of the rich and twisted old woman in the decaying mansion-doubts begin to set in. This film's equivalent of Miss Havisham is merely grotesque and faintly comic, and utterly lacks the haunting majesty of Dickens's bitter character. But where the film goes badly wrong is the central relationship between Finn/Pip and Estella. Dickens in his time was pretty scathing about America - I should like to read his review of the film, for where it has departed from the book it shows itself to be as shallow as its age and culture. The complex mixture of fascination, adoration and obsession which the impressionable and socially-aspiring Pip feels for cruel, cold Estella becomes in this film utterly and only about sex. Thus the whole dynamic of the relationship and therefore of the story has changed. It becomes a story about two very sad people who abuse each other sexually, and then feel bewildered and lost. In a culture where physical intimacy comes so cheap (and the nudity here is way over the top), genuine intimacy (or, as we used to say, love), has no place.
The best moments in the film are the ones which are lifted straight from Dickens: the embarrassment over the socially-maladroit Joe into Finn's new life, the reappearance of the convict and the awful dawning of the truth on Finn, of where the money has come from. I do not recommend this film, in spite of some beautiful photography; I recommend that you avoid it and buy the book instead.
I do recommend, however, that if you missed the BBC adaptation of Our Mutual Friend, you beg, borrow or buy the video and settle down for a real treat for the eyes and ears and mind which is true to the author's intention.
Once again Dickens takes money as his theme and exposes the foolishness of riches and those who trust in them. Many of the characters make a journey which involves a kind of death and a resurrection as they learn the power and value of selfless love. It is a story to hearten the Christian and perhaps cause the unbeliever to consider whether some of these beautiful ideas which a former generation held as certainties might not just be true. Charles Dickens has many a powerful parable for this century and the next.
