Oliver Twist
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Rated: PG-13
Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/olivertwist/
Release Date: 2005-09-30
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman, Frank Finlay, Harry Eden
Director: Roman Polanski
Screenwriter: Ronald Harwood
WorkNameSort: Oliver Twist

Well, he’s got the dinginess down. In Roman Polanski’s interpretation of Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the London streets see hungry, unwashed masses taunted by nearby reminders of unattainable solvency. At night, the avenues turn desolate, with the pedestrian traffic limited to two or three skulking souls at a time, none of whom can by definition be up to any good. With such images coming closely on the heels of the visually akin The Pianist, it can truly be said that Polanski has entered his ghetto period.

The time is ripe to revisit Twist, in which poor souls like the orphaned Oliver (Barney Clark) are shunted from exploiter to exploiter, valued for their laboring abilities yet despised for the random humility of their station. What option does a boy have but to throw his lot in with the likes of the wily Fagin (Ben Kingsley) and his band of juvenile pickpockets? The abundance of villains is in stark relief to the dearth of genuine heroes; in the shadowy corners of larceny, the closest thing to genuine pathos is the criminal element’s highly warranted fear of an indiscriminate justice system that is “so very fond of hanging.”

Don’t expect Oliver and his sometime protector, the pubescent delinquent Nancy (Leanne Rowe), to share a cheery chorus of “I’d Do Anything.” It isn’t Dickens the musical-theater fountainhead that Polanski is interested in, but Dickens the impassioned reformer. You can feel both men’s sense of social outrage in every blow struck to an innocent urchin’s backside, every bang of an oafishly arbitrary judge’s gavel.

Now if Polanski only had a more consistent set of mouthpieces to deliver the message. Kingsley’s Fagin is out: In addition to his moral ambiguity, he’s saddled with a faceful of disfiguring makeup that renders about a third of his hammy performance unintelligible. While there’s a nice sense of powerlessness to Rowe’s almost-a-woman act, the seductive evil the story requires is sorely lacking from the character of Fagin’s main protégé, The Artful Dodger. In that role, kid actor Harry Eden is actually less compelling a presence than several of the children in lesser roles.

The lack of star quality extends to ostensible lead Clark, whose reactive portrayal is broken by sporadic acts of defiance that lack complete conviction; it’s as if he understood what was motivating Oliver at these desperate moments but was unable to experience it directly. Polanski’s Twist is a serious and credible movie with a great many virtues – gorgeous cinematography and an activist zeal chief among them – but it’s something you watch rather than lose yourself in. You never see the story through Oliver’s eyes, largely because there doesn’t seem to be very much behind them.

This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2005.