Thursday, March 20, 2008

Great Expectations

"I'm not going to tell the story the way it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember it."

That was how the movie began. And somehow, I must admit that this is one of those classics-turned-into-movie that I actually enjoyed--and I enjoyed it tremendously that I watched it again and again--more so due to Ethan Hawke, Robert de Niro, Hank Azaria and the forever classy Anne Bancroft (yes, Gwyneth Paltrow is purposely omitted).

This film is a stylish and brilliant remake of a classic by Charles Dickens and could almost be considered timeless. Great Expectations is about love, family, and rejection as Pip and Miss Havisham have both been rejected in certain ways. Pip is the main character, a boy around 13 years old, easy to fright, and goes through his life suffering lots of sadness. He is in love with a girl named Estella and wants her to find his love, but for him being shy and not showing himself to her, makes it very hard for him.

Pip meets an escaped convict, Magwitch, and gives him food, in an encounter that is to haunt both their lives. When Pip receives riches from a mysterious benefactor he snobbishly abandons his friends for London society and his 'great expectations'. He grows through misfortune and suffering to maturity in similar theme of Dicken's best-loved novels. Dickens blends gripping drama with penetrating satire to give a compelling story rich in comedy and pathos: in Great Expectations he has also created two of his finest, most haunting characters in Pip and Miss Havisham.

In a love story that would haunt their whole lives together, after the success of his first sold-out exhibition, Pip, in the movie said:

"I did it! I did it! I am a wild success! I sold them all, all my paintings.
You don't have to be embarrassed by me anymore, I'm rich! Isn't that what you wanted, aren't 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..."

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