All clear, I wish to sound the all clear. Anthony Lane in The New Yorker is full of it; Polanski's version of Oliver Twist is just fine for children of any age to watch, especially when one considers the violent drecht (sp?) in lots and lots of everyday cartoons for kids on TV. Furthermore Anthony Lane's gratuitous ('Look at me, I'm pure') riff about AntiSemitism in the original, published version of the novel about 160 years ago, has zero relevance to this accurate movie version of the novel which was published four years after the original.
The murder of Nancy occurs virtually off-camera, a detail 'puff-up' Lane leaves out.
His reservations about the performance of the actor playing Fagin is completely inexplicable.
My only reservation in the acting is that I wish the actor who played Sikes in the David Lean version years ago could have been available to Polanski.
This movie is a splendid effort, produced by France, England and Czechoslavakia. The nominal Producers are Polanski himself, and two others. It makes Hollywood look like the girlieman playground it really has become. Trash.
Barry
3 comments:
Hope you'll let me know your reaction
to the film shortly after attending a screening.
You know, your visceral reaction as well as
your analysis. I have a criticism now that time
has past. The children never seemed hungry, we
were simply told they were hungry. I've been hungry.
And, as a stage director - long ago - I want the actors
to find what's different about our physical behavior
when we are achingly hungry, or, in a later stage
numb to being hungry. It looks as if the direrctor didn't
even strive for a hungry look through makeup.
Barry
I was a little bummed to see that this was rated PG-13, and I'm guessing it was another one of those films that started with an R rating and got edited back. Why can't anybody make decent children's programming anymore!
Too much pixie dust falling upon
children can retard their emotional
developement. My children 3, 5. 10,
saw the movie and loved it.
Oliver Twist has been favorite children'sfare
for 150 years; it is,today,a parent's
responsibility to clue their children to
what the world was like in London at the dawn
of the Industrial Revolution when Oliver
Twist was written. There are places in the world
today even worse,far worse, worse for
children, than it was at the time of Dickens.
Barry
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