"Oliver Twist" - movie review

     "Oliver Twist" is a Charles Dickens's world famous novel which was published in 1838, has become such an essential part of Western literary lore and culture and, of course, has been brought to the screen many times before.

     The essential plot deals with a 10-year-old orphan living in a squalid Victorian workhouse, embarks on a journey to London, where he comes under the tutelage of a pickpocket named Fagin and, after a robbery goes awry, is subsequently taken in by a wealthy man named Brownlow. Incensed, Fagin's most sadistic protege, Bill Sikes, kidnaps Oliver and the boy becomes the object of a fierce, metaphorically rich struggle between two archetypal father figures.

     In my view the best film adaptations of "Oliver Twist" were David Lean's 1948 film starring Alec Guinness as an unforgettable Fagin and Carol Reed's 1968 musical, simply titled "Oliver!". However, the movie, shot in Prague by the Polish cinematographer Pawel Edelman, is consistent with its interpretation of Dickens's, is the worth of attention, although Polanski has taken some liberties and compressed some of the original text. And yet. Polanski has constructed his "Oliver Twist" with such lavish attention to detail and such reverence for the book that  the movie became dark, dank and violent, filled with terrifying scenes in which exploited children are beaten, shot or starving to death. In other words, it's just as Dickens wrote.

       In the landscape of "Oliver Twist" goodness is so rare and inexplicable as to seem almost absurd. Oliver is played by Barney Clark, who was 11 when the film was made and whose slight frame and delicate features emphasize his character's vulnerability. An orphan, Oliver lands first in a workhouse (its resemblance to a concentration camp is hardly accidental), and before long finds himself apprenticed to a weak-willed coffin maker. At every turn he is menaced by adults whose grotesqueness, while comical, is also a measure of their moral deformity, and of the ugliness of the society that makes them possible. The worst thing about these villains, who tend to occupy positions of at least relative power, is that they believe their sadism and lack of compassion to be the highest expressions of benevolence.

      Most of all I want to mention a fruitful visual collaboration between cinematographer Pawel Edelman and production designer Herve de Luze and solid performances by Ben Kingsley as Fagin, Jamie Foreman as Bill Sikes and newcomer Barney Clark as young Oliver as well as good selection of costumes and scenery.

     If you're a die-hard fan of the musical then you probably won't enjoy but if you're a film lover who can appreciate a legendary film-maker's audacious re-telling then sit back and enjoy.