Thoughts on Great Expectations

 

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"What is it like not to feel anything?"
"... Let's say there was a little girl, and from the time she could understand, she was taught to fear ... let's say she was taught to fear daylight. She was taught that it was her enemy, that it would hurt her. And then one sunny day, you ask her to go outside and play, and she won't. You can't be angry at her, can you?"
"I knew that little girl, and I saw the light in her eyes, and no matter what you say or do, that's still what I see."
"(turns to face him, teary-eyed) We are who we are. People don't change."

Gwyneth Paltrow had five movies released in 1998. That's right out of the studio system and for a while, she was seen as a throwback to a bygone age. TV Guide: "Only royalty separates Gwyneth from Grace Kelly. (Give her time.)" Like Grace, Gwyneth won an Oscar. Unlike Grace, Gwyneth has topped the adult contemporary charts, made movies unheard of in Louis B. Mayer's day, been key in the MeToo movement and sold vagina-scented candles. I'm going to guess she's okay with not having become a princess.

Many stars and creative types have made at least one old-fashioned love story. You can do it in your youth, like Gwyneth and Ethan Hawke as Estella and Finn, né Pip. You can do it when you're paying your dues, like director Alfonso Cuarón. If you hang around long enough, you might play a flat supporting role. Hank Azaria did when he played Walter, guileless enough to ask Finn if he charges by the inch or the hour ... for commissioned artwork. Then again, your role could have some depth to it, like Joe had for Chris Cooper or Lustig, né Magwitch, had for Robert De Niro, who really just makes two prolonged cameo appearances. You might also get a role allowing for excess, like Nora Dinsmoor*, née Miss Havisham, allowed for Anne Bancroft. Great Expectations was adapted from Dickens by Mitch Glazer and an uncredited David Mamet.

*Sam Staggs, in his Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, suspected that the N.D. initials weren't coincidental.

I've never actually read Great Expectations, so this adaptation's creative team focusing primarily on Finn and Estella's doomed relationship doesn't upset me as much as it upset 1998's critics. I'll say that if the powers that be intended to make a movie that would appeal to date night audiences, they failed. Ethan and Gwyneth don't appear on screen until nearly a half-hour in, by which time De Niro seems to have come and gone and Bancroft's already gone about as far as she can with the maybe colorful, maybe volatile spinster routine.

"Give me your hand. ... What it this?"

"Your ... your boob."

"My heart. It's my heart. It's broken. Can you tell?"

Estella's been raised by Dinsmoor to never fall in love, which is, like, so, so sad, you guys, because Finn really loves her! He has ever since they met, an experience which included her sitting for the first of many portraits and surprising him with a kiss as they drank from Dinsmoor's fountain. Finn keeps loving Estella despite the classism and toying with his emotions, not to mention her role in his drive to reinvent himself as a successful artist who runs the risk of having an especially limited portfolio. Words can't describe the hilarity of Walter not knowing how to react to Finn's place being filled with numerous sketches of a naked Estella.

"This is one more film in which the heroine's posing nude for an artist is supposed to make her more fully defined," Janet Maslin wrote. Expectations obviously wasn't influenced by Titanic, but did have the bad luck to open in theaters at a time when that movie was still defining or meeting moviegoers' expectations of great, swoon-worthy romance. The next love story on my viewing schedule is The Wedding Singer, which at least had the good fortune to be a romantic comedy. Anyway, it will be interesting to see which 1998 movies, if any, seem to play the cards previously held by Titanic. I'm especially fond of cliches, so I'll give a point to Expectations for Finn and Estella sharing a big kiss in the rain after he's pulled her away from a dinner date.

"Updating a classic piece of literature for the screen is not a crime against nature," Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Expectations, he wrote, followed the lead of 1996's Romeo + Juliet, but with less success. While I can't accurately judge Expectations as an adaptation, I can say it falls short as a pre-makeout movie but does pretty well at giving Gwyneth and Ethan opportunities for star turns. Your mileage may vary as to what they do with those opportunities. Poor Ethan does seem to be a bit overwhelmed by his dialogue.

"(narrating) Tonight all of my dreams came true, and like all happy endings, it was a tragedy. Of my own device. For I'd succeeded. I had cut myself loose from Joe, from the past, from the Gulf, from poverty. I had invented myself. I had done it cruelly, but I'd done it. I was free."

*Finn, outside Estella's family home, calls upward*

"I did it! I did it! I am a wild success! I sold 'em all! All my paintings! You don't have to be embarrassed by me anymore! I'm rich! Isn't that what you wanted? Huh? Isn't it great? Are we happy now? Don't you understand, that everything I do, I do it for you? Anything that might be special in me is you."

Not Recommended.

Thoughts:
-- "Hey, Finn -- nothing harder than being given your chance."
-- Box Office: Grossing $26.4 million domestically on a $25 million budget, this opened at No. 2 and came in at No. 73 for 1998.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "Postmodern Cliffs Notes with an alt-rock soundtrack," Owen Gleiberman wrote. "The moment this movie declares itself as being mostly about affairs of the heart, it limits its potential," according to Roger Ebert. Desson Howe: "There's nothing wrong, nor particularly right about the experience. It just sits there, like a Nike ad." The A.V. Club was more favorable in 2013, declaring Expectations to be "boldly sensual." Maslin admitted that despite the directorial approach being "so bold and vulgar that it has no business working ... often it does."

-- Critic's Corner, most of the cast: "While appealing enough, Hawke exhibits limited range and depth," according to Todd McCarthy, Variety. While Hawke had an appealing innocence according to Turan, he also came across as too much of a hangdog, which Turan said didn't work well opposite Paltrow's "performance lacking in dimension. The result is that the passion that supposedly exists between these two never shows up on screen." As for De Niro, Maslin felt that he gave "the most successfully Dickensian performance in the movie." I disagree. I'd give it to Cooper.

-- Critic's Corner, Anne: "Campy enough to suggest Baby Jane in Las Vegas," Maslin wrote. Turan: "Her excessiveness has been allowed to set the film's tone in a fatally off-putting way." "Colorful but predictable," McCarthy wrote. Ebert: "(Her) performance is interesting ... she is human, and not without humor."

-- Maybe I'm nuts, but I'm now wondering what Sylvia Sidney would have brought to the role of Dinsmoor.

-- Hey, It's ...!: Nell Campbell, Gabriel Mann, Peter Jacobson, Lance Reddick and Gerry Bamman.

-- Fanservice Junction: Besides the sketches of Estella and her and Finn finally having sex, we have Ethan rocking a flattering pair of jeans when Finn and Estella reunite, then Finn in a towel when he lets in Walter.

-- Musical Moments: The score is 2-1, favoring songs not written for the movies they were featured in. I'm making all of those renditions of Dinsmore's favorite, "Bésame Mucho," share the recognition. The first original entry is Tori Amos' "Siren."

-- Possible blooper: The opening scenes may be taking place in the 1970s. Late-teenage Estella (age 17 or 18) justifies attending a party without a chaperone on the grounds that it is the 1980s. Prior to that, though, when young Finn (age 10) comes home, the TV is tuned to Blockbusters, which premiered in 1980.

-- Before I forget, let's not forget the unsung heroes of the movie: Jeremy James Kissner as young Finn, Raquel Beaudene as young Estella and especially Francesco Clemente, who created all that artwork.

-- "You know what this is? ... It's my heart. ... And it's broken. ... Can you feel that?" "... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. ... *screech-sobbing* What have I done?!"

-- Next: The Replacement Killers. On deck: Sphere.