gscheyd

As a fan of many so-called classic films, I am nonetheless aware that there is some validity to the criticism that early movies (say, anything before Brando in Streetcar) as a rule have less vitality than their modern counterparts, are formulaic to a fault, and strain the limits of modern attention spans more than can be fully blamed on the viewer. Great Expectations treads miles clear of any of these criticisms, and so I recommend it in particular to anyone who has a general disdain for films that a) were released in the first half of the 20th century and/or b) were shot in black and white. Here is one that can change your mind.

Naturally, given the talents of the author, the plot itself leaves little to be desired. Further, David Lean, his cast, and his crew, have done a splendid job translating Dickens to the screen. This is indeed, as the Criterion Collection folks have classified it, one of the "Great Adaptations." I doubt that there is a better cinematic adaptation of any Dickens novel and am almost certain there is none in which the Dickensian English dialogue flows more pleasantly and naturally. The actors herein deliver Dickens as Olivier himself delivered Shakespeare. Nor is this an unimportant accomplishment; having to spend a couple of hours listening to actors who sound more like they are delivering a series of quotes (though admittedly they are) than that they are actually conversing can be positively unbearable. Indeed I think that's the main thing that people are hitting upon when, with broad brush-strokes, they paint older films as tedious. Great Expectations is the antidote to just this attitude.

If you are a lover of classic films, you have likely already seen this one or will do so regardless of my review, but if, on the other hand, you entertain the possibility of watching Great Expectations with a deep-seated skepticism I implore you to give it a chance. I have every confidence you'll be pleasantly surprised and find yourself drawn into what is, after all, a fascinating story.

There Will Be Blood is a strong movie in virtually every area, but what impressed me most of all was Jonny Greenwood's score. As in Jaws, and perhaps even more so in this case, the music creates an atmosphere of suspense that no combination of writing, acting, scenery, costume, makeup, etc. could come close to achieving in its absence. Greenwood's (usually) minimalist post-modern orchestral score sets such a tone from the opening seconds of the film, as we see the early struggles of our antihero, Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview. We watch a man driven by an unquenchable greed and hear a swell of strings foreshadowing the decades of suffering that his greed will impose (on himself and on anyone in whom he sees an opportunity for advantage).

The character of Plainview is not a depiction of a pure psychopath, in the way that Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh was in No Country for Old Men. He is a bit more nuanced, but the glimpses we are given into the fact that Plainview does in fact possess a capability for regret, sadness, and empathy make him that much less likable for his repeatedly ignoring such feelings in the quest to fill his pockets. Here is a man not to be crossed, and one whose protean unpredictability leaves all but his essential business associates ever at risk of crossing him should they happen to encounter him on the wrong day.

The use of religion by the oil man and of the oil man by religion makes for one of the most interesting elements in the story line. Apparently the two were even stranger bedfellows in the days before Newt Gingrich's neocon revolution. One wonders what Upton Sinclair (socialist author of the source work) would have made of the current U.S. administration, or rather, one hardly needs to wonder. Naturally, at the time of its writing the source work (Oil) was a criticism of the big business syndicates of Sinclair's day, but you know, the less things change the more they stay the same; and if I were to attempt an exegesis on There Will Be Blood it would be to make a case that Paul Thomas Anderson intended explicitly (though not exclusively) for the film to remind us of some of the less honorable practices of the current administration. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but this is certainly the impression that I got.

Anyway, back to the manifest content of the film -- I awoke the day after having watched There Will Be Blood with a handful of very vivid images left over in my mind, scenes of destruction and ruin, not bothered by them so much as impressed with the movie's ability to occupy my thoughts in so vivid a manner. Anderson, Day-Lewis, and Greenwood each deserve a round of applause for what they've done here. By their efforts, they have given us a movie that will be well-remembered decades hence.

I figure to be among the lower raters of this film, but I really rather enjoyed it. On the whole, it has to be considered a success, but broken down into its major components -- a suspense thriller on the one hand, a romantic drama on the other -- a sizable distinction is revealed. As a thriller, it's right up there with Hitchcock's best films; as a romance it's one step up from mediocre (well, maybe a step and a half, but only because we're talking about Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant here). Also, the romance and thriller elements basically just run in parallel throughout the film, whereas I'd have preferred to see them woven together. My impression was that this never quite happened, though it comes close in a scene or two. (Compare Notorious in these respects to North by Northwest, which I found was superb from both the thriller and romance angles and involved more influence of each on the other.)

The film's greatest achievement lies in its presentation of the precarious balance created as characters begin uncovering each other's secrets. The espionage makes for a wonderfully complicated bit of game theory. There are certain facts known to all of the characters, others that are secrets held only by one or two characters, others that were secrets but have since been discovered by another character (unbeknownst to those who formerly held the secrets), and still other former secrets whose discovery has been discovered by those who originally held them (unbeknownst to the discoverer who now overestimates his or her advantage). If it seems a bit overdone, it's only because I couldn't think of a better way of concisely explaining it. The film is in fact remarkably elegant in fitting these pieces together.

Had the project been handed to a lesser director, I'm sure it all would have come across as stilted and forced; either that or a lot of the material would have just been cut to make the story more manageable. It's the sort of story one might read in a novel and think, "This would make such a great movie, but they really couldn't do it justice in under four hours. Oh well." This one weighs in at around 100 minutes I think. It's quite an accomplishment in that respect, and if the love story falls short of Casablanca, well I can forgive it for that.