Visitors Review

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU (2012-05-26 10:13)

No happy ending to be expected

One of the cruelest stories I know. Dickens is so cruel we cannotimagine he is a man, what's more a humane human being.A poor orphan, Pip, is raised by a poor blacksmith. A life of rough andtough luck. Take it or leave it, but there is no way out, except theradical one. And he dreams of being a gentleman one day. An aberrationof course, morally wrong and bad taste.He is selected and invited by Miss Havisham, a deranged rich woman whois mourning in total decay and sorrow after the failure of her weddingwhen the bridegroom did not come, twenty years before. Her objective isto provide a male companion and eventually husband to her adopteddaughter, Estella.But one night on the moor Pip is "accosted" by an prison escapee ofsome kind who asks for food and the boy of six or seven, maybe eightprovides in the night, including a file for him to get rid of hismanacles. He will turn up as his benefactor.Luck, luck and luck. But then systematically Dickens shatters everysingle opportunity and hope on the side of the boy, Pip, who ends up inprison for unpaid debts, on the side of his benefactor, Abel, who willdie in prison holding Pip's hand after his final arrest, on the side ofMiss Havisham who will achieve none of her plans, on the side ofEstella who will marry the rich and noble young man, will be brutalizedand will end up alone in Miss Havisham's house, on the side of Biddywho will marry Joe the Blacksmith when Pip finally realizes she hadbeen his closest ever friend, and even on the side of Estella who willrefuse to requite Pip's love, though she will accept to make him herplatonic companion in Miss Havisham's.redecorated house.That cruelty is so extreme that we just wonder if Dickens then is notgoing through a phase of complete social rejection, rejection of theupper classes, rejection of the lower classes, rejection of justice,rejection of any discourse about the possible improvement ofindividuals and society. Absolute resignation and pessimisticsubmission to a totally inhumane world that only has some small pocketsof satisfaction, but never for yourself, always for some rare others.He did not even salvage the exiled criminal who became Pip'sbenefactor, as Victor Hugo did in Les Misérables, and makes him die asolitary, nearly solitary death in prison with the sole company of theyoung man he tried and failed to help, and unaware of his daughter'sfate, which does not seem to be particularly brilliant anyway, sinceshe is Estella, daughter of a female assassin and a male exiledcriminal condemned to absolute reclusion for life.I just wonder if here Dickens does not reach Zola's pessimism whoconsidered that anyone born in a criminal circle could only be that anddrag everyone around him down into that criminal circle. No salvationfor those who are badly born. The belief in an elected people turnedinto a savage and wild social Darwinism: some have been elected to becrushed and powdered by life as slowly as possible for them to regretever being born but absolutely unable to shorten the ordeal.Sad and sad and sad.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Arnie Mellor (2012-05-25 23:44)

Breathtaking

This would have to be the best three hours of viewing Ihaveseen in years.The acting,locations and costumes were spoton.Mr.Dickens was probably turning in his grave at some ofthe'adjustments'made to his original story.but I don't thinkthisspoiled the viewing in any way.You have to give the Englishcredit,they surely know how to make historical type movies.