Roman Polanski’s take on the Dickens classic, OLIVER TWIST, is a respectful one, and by respectful, I mean safe. Nowhere is there the distinct voice of the auteur that could raise a gaggle of goosebumps with the perfectly positioned camera angle that one finds in ROSEMARY’S BABY, CHINATOWN, or THE PIANIST. There is none of the visual elegance to be found in even his less-than-successful works such as the muddled THE NINTH GATE, nor is there the anarchic subversion of THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS. He takes the Dickens that screenwriter Ronald Harwood has faithfully transcribed and doesn’t so much bring it to life as turn it into a handsomely mounted still life.
For all the hard blows and bad luck that orphaned Oliver (Barney Clark) has to endure as a waif adrift in a polite society that regards him with indifference, there is surprisingly little empathy, even in that most resonant scene where the starving orphan approaches the master of the workhouse in which he finds himself and plaintively asks for more gruel. It’s not that Clark doesn’t have the right angelic look to his pinched face onto which he can bloom a smile at the slightest kindness shown his character, and onto which he can skillfully drop a single tear at the evils that the world visits upon him. And it’s not that he doesn’t faint well, his spindly body suddenly going limp with great conviction whether from hunger or fever or both. Rather, it’s that the pace Polonaski sets that is as lugubrious as the world inhabited by the underclasses of mid-19th century London in whose company the film spends the bulk of its time. Most of the other actors take their cue from that, hence psychopathic Bill Sykes (Jamie Foreman) comes off as more cranky than crazed, and the Artful Dodger (Harry Eden) doesn’t so much swagger as pose. Bucking that trend is Sir Ben Kingsley as Fagin, the fence with whom Oliver falls in who mentors boys into the world of petty crime and worse. He jams every second of screen time with copious amounts of overacting such that he becomes a grotesque caricature unbearable to watch and not in an interesting way.
Better is Mark Strong as Toby, Sykes’ crony in crime, a would-be aesthete with hair that is too red for nature and a speaking manner that is too florid for good sense. Better still is Edward Hardwicke exuding a genuine sense of warmth and humanity as Oliver’s wealthy benefactor Mr. Brownlow. Best is Leanne Rowe as Nancy, whose violently red lipstick only serves to make her face more childlike despite the ample cleavage on display. She has the complexity demonstrated by the best of Dickens’ characters, in this case it’s the inner conflict between her unshakable instinct for goodness that has somehow survived a harsh existence, and the desperate way she tries to fumble out how to act on that instinct without having had any sort of model to go by. This is the exploited child of the piece who inspires the pathos with little if any left over for the sublimely lucky (in the long run) Oliver, who as the hero of the story should be the one plucking most insistently at our heartstrings.
OLIVER TWIST does retain some of the bite Dickens intended, laying open the careless way the rich dismiss the poor, but comes off as more of a nibble than anything else. Despite the pretty cinematography and some lovely touches involving ravens and a preternaturally insightful dog, the respect everyone involved so patently feels for the work adds up to very little.
Your Thoughts?