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Thursday, January 29, 1998

Updated Dickens focuses on youth

FILM: Interpretation

of beloved classic brings novel into a '90s setting

By Aimee Phan

Daily Bruin Staff

When Hollywood puts a classic novel on the big screen, it has to live up to great expectations.

For the latest interpretation of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations," filmmakers were challenged to adapt the 19th-century novel about social class and love into a story relevant to the '90s.

"Great Expectations" is a young person's typical introduction to Dickens. The story is fairly simple compared to Dickens' other epics: Young poor boy Pip (Ethan Hawke) falls in love with snotty rich girl Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow) and spends his entire life trying to climb the social ladder to become a gentleman worthy of his beloved. Along the way, two eccentrics, Estella's wealthy and demented guardian Miss Havisham (Anne Bancroft) and a mysterious criminal named Magwitch (Robert DeNiro), are instrumental in determining the destinies of the two would-be lovers.

When director Alfonso Cuaron ("A Little Princess") and screenwriter Mitch Glazer ("Scrooged") decided to modernize "Great Expectations," both were apprehensive about what to change in the famous novel.

Cuaron admits that this "re-elaboration" of the film will probably not please everyone with its modifications, but he is confident that their movie stays true to the heart of the novel.

"There's no two people that have the same explanation about what the whole book is about," Cuaron says. "It can be about destiny, social class and acceptance and at the end it's about everything all together."

Finding a '90s version of England's 19th-century aristocratic society, a setting which plays a big role in the story of class hierarchy, was one of the first challenges for the filmmakers.

Glazer finally settled upon focusing the story on two places, South Florida as the place of Pip's impoverished childhood and New York as the wealthy aristocracy of modern times. The screenwriter borrowed from his own upbringing in South Florida.

"My family used to vacation at Palm Beach during the summers and look at all the rich people," Glazer says. "And I thought if Miss Havisham was to come alive today, she could be this eccentric lady living in this crumbling mansion. Then I thought celebrity and fame could be the new aristocracy."

Another significant revision in the story is the changing of all the major characters' names except for Estella. Glazer explains that he changed the names because "they were too 'Dickensian'", thus, Miss Havisham became Ms. Dinsmoor, Magwitch became Lustig, and Pip became Pompey. Unfortunately, the cast and crew had a big problem with the name "Pompey."

"They thought it sounded like Muffy," Glazer remembers. "I was drawing on my childhood and my sense of romance from that age and I gave him the name of the toughest coolest kid I knew. (Ethan) actually refused to say the name.

"He just saw this image of a girl hockey player. And I said he's in prison now, he's that tough a guy. But they were like no, it's just too silly."

In the end, Hawke received the privilege of renaming his own character.

"We were sitting in Ethan's trailer minutes before a scene where you were going to hear the name for the first time," Glazer says. "And Ethan said, 'What about Finn?' which had echoes of Pip, obviously. Also if it didn't work, we could blame Ethan."

For Cuaron, the name change was a small price in exchange for the talented actor. But the director was pleased with his entire cast, which he insists contained all his first-choices.

For the role of icy heroine Estella, Cuaron selected Paltrow even though he was not initially familiar with her work. But after seeing "Emma," he realized she would be ideal for the part. He commends Paltrow's performance in playing a complex character who had to maintain the audience's sympathy while still being cruel to Hawke's Finn.

"Forget about the obvious beauty and sophistication, it's this magic that she projects," Cuaron says. "Her portrayal of Estella was so courageous. She's portraying this apparently very cold and manipulative woman, but from inside you see all this pain that she's going through."

While those who have read "Great Expectations" will no doubt remember how Estella cruelly leads the main character on and is his continuing source of happiness and misery, Paltrow believes that Estella is also a victim of people's manipulations.

"I know (Estella) comes off really horrible like she has a really mean spirit, but I really didn't think of her that way," Paltrow says. "She's been raised by this insane person (Miss Havisham/Ms. Dinsmoor) to be like this. The meaner she is, the more her mother figure tells her, 'You're such a good girl.' It's a very confusing thing to do to a child. In her heart, I think she is a good person. It wouldn't have been her nature if she wasn't raised that way so I felt very bad for her."

Paltrow credits her multi-layered performance to Cuaron's dedicated vision and the rigid work ethic he maintained throughout the entire shoot.

"(Alfonso) is such a passionate filmmaker," Paltrow says. "It was really like an education because he would get in fights with the studio all the time about money and this and that. He had the whole film completed in his head before we even began. He can't compromise his vision, which I think is so extraordinary. You work with so many wishy-washy people. It was really refreshing."

While Paltrow was content to leave the film in Cuaron's hands, Hawke, on the other hand, was more than eager to become involved with the creative direction of the project. The actor often conferred with Cuaron and Glazer over several of the movie's pivotal scenes, asking questions and offering suggestions.

"Ethan started raising all these questions,"Cuaron says. "A big percentage of what you see on the screen (was) Ethan, Mitch and me on the set every morning, forgetting about the pages and just improvising things and rethinking the whole scene. You have this puzzle that you're not sure if the pieces are coming together. It was very risky and very stressful."

One of the risks that Cuaron is talking about is the removal of some of the novel's most important plot lines, such as Miss Havisham's fiery death and DeNiro's character being revealed as Estella's father. Glazer explains that it was due to time constraints and hopes that dedicated Dickens fans will forgive the omissions.

"It was editing," Glazer says. "The trick with adapting this book was there was so many gifts to it, the man had hundreds of plots going on the book, but we had to make the movie focus."

And for those loyal by-the-book fans who might not be pleased with this modernized version complete with a rock and roll soundtrack and a more intimate relationship between Pip/Finn and Estella, Hawke points out that the theme of the novel is still in tact.

"As far as this is concerned, the Merchant Ivory approach has been done," Hawke says. "David Lean did this movie (the 1946 version) very well if you want a period version of it. If you are interested in the theme of this piece, the way Alfonso is, then I think there's something really fun about taking something and spinning it on its head and showing it in a new way."

FILM: "Great Expectations" opens on Friday.

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