Friday, December 28, 2007

In the Screening Room - Alfonso Cuaron's
Great Expectations


Session 014 - Great Expectations

Who saw it and what are your thoughts on it?

By Brian Mulligan at 7:22 AM

1 comment:

Brian Mulligan said...

You can tell that Alfonso Cuaron was still developing as a director with Great Expectations. It's still early on in his filmography and the tone (and the casting) of the movie is still a little questionable.

Ethan Hawke, who has grown tremendously as an actor since the turn of the millenium, was still unfortunately stiff and baby-faced here. He doesn't exude the lovelorn feelings that he needs to in the role. Plus, 'his' artwork is largely dreadful... ruining any chance the audience will buy him as any sort of artistic genius and overnight success story.

Gwyneth Paltrow fares only a bit better as the object of his desire. She's supposed to be cold and tormenting and she succeeds in spades but I never felt like she was anything much to obsess and fawn over.

Thankfully then Robert De Niro has a welcome, entertaining cameo and the story is updated from the Dickens' classic. Because even if the actor's don't hit all the beats, the story itself of a woman who is taught to never love and to torment her suitors is an intriguing one.

Seeing Hawke fall time and time again for this woman who can only break his heart is touching and the only time that the actor's youthful looks work for him. We can see him longing for Paltrow, the naivete of "happily ever after" in his mind. And we want him to succeed, even if we know the relationship is likely doomed.

Cuaron does some nice work directing the camera and creating a unique world unto itself... but it's nowhere near the strength of his later films Children of Men or even Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Still... even an underdeveloped Cuaron is better than most. B-

January 2, 2008 at 7:42 PM

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