Starring: Barney Clark, Ben Kingsley

4 out of 10 stars

I am willing to wager that high school students around the country will find themselves greatly indebted to Roman Polanski for creating a screen version of Oliver Twist that will allow them to skip watching either the 1968 musical version or the 1948 black-and-white adaptation. Without superfluous (if wholly enjoyable) musical numbers to distract and/or confuse them, or the discomfort of searching out the David Lean film that would be like, totally way too old, it should be easy enough for any middling English student to sit down and watch Polanski's scrupulous and very dry version of Dickens' tale and crank out a reasonably coherent paper on the novel upon which it is based. Any resulting paper will, of course, have little to no passing familiarity with the heart and soul of Dickens, but then again, you could say the same about this movie.

Faithful to the letter if not the spirit of the novel, this Oliver Twist is so bloodless it could pass for one of the cadavers tended to by Oliver's first guardian, the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry. All the plot twists are there, as are the characters and settings, but while they're artfully rendered and costumed to death, there's little heart beating underneath all the 19th century finery. In recreating the world of Dickens' adorable orphan moppet, Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood have failed to fill their cinematic world with any emotion or excitement; the movie is all about the mechanics of recreation, from costumes to plotlines. Harwood's screenplay hits each part of the book with a dull devotion, Polanski guides his actors through their paces, and the movie is art directed and costumed within an inch of its life. But it feels like it's all show and no tell, just a recitation of the high points of the novel with an attempt at a little dash of color thrown in here and there to give you a hint of what Dickens is really like. This isn't so much Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist as it is Cliffs Notes'.

Though his plight as that of a helpless naïf subjected to the vagaries of malevolent forces around him would seem to bring an obvious parallel to the hero of Polanski's last film, The Pianist, this Oliver more readily brings to mind another unfortunate Polanski protagonist: Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Beautiful, tragic, and utterly blank, Barney Clark's Oliver is a little boy version of Nastassia Kinski's Tess - he's an actor used primarily as set decoration and plot motivation and little more. But whereas Kinski was backed up by Polanski's talent at capturing the melancholia of Thomas Hardy that mixed sadness with tinges of unattainable hope, Clark has only a fake London and a cast of actors obsessed with tics and accents to fall back on. From the very first, Oliver is nothing more than a pretty face smudged with dirt, as he goes from the orphanage to the hands of the aforementioned Mr. Sowerberry, taking beatings everywhere he lands. With his wan appearance and adorable features, Clark invites a kind of involuntary sympathy that has less to do with him as a person than it does watching something sweet and cute subjected to various thrashings; it's like watching Oliver Twist being played by a kitten.

Once he abandons the countryside for London, Oliver falls into the hands of the Artful Dodger (sprightly Harry Eden) and, of course, the crafty Fagin (Ben Kingsley), who means to put Oliver's angelic appearance to good use as a pickpocket. Kingsley at first appears to be a bundle of showy mannerisms and putty latex in such constant movement that you can't get a read on the performance at all. His Fagin shuffles and scatters about in such a grandstanding manner that you can't imagine him functioning in any way off screen as a real person. It's a performance that seems more stagebound than anything, and when you finally do get a direct look at Kingsley, you don't see the actor himself but rather the Best Make-Up Oscar you know the movie is going to be nominated for. But rather than taking fun in the oversized caricature Kingsley presents, you're bogged down by all the fussiness that goes into it. It's all showmanship without the zing.

And you could say the same for the rest of the movie, as it closely follows Dickens but has none of the dizzying highs or drama that made him a master storyteller. Everything in this Oliver Twist feels forced and rote, with none of the broad strokes of humor or horror that punctuates Oliver's adventures. Fagin's gang of pickpockets are practically faceless, Oliver's benefactor Mr. Brownlow (Edward Hardwicke) is a kindly mannequin with an overdone mustache, and even the dastardly Bill Sykes (Jamie Forman), one of Dickens' most viscerally threatening villains, seems like nothing more than a grumpy gus. (It doesn't help that Forman resembles a particularly hungover Jack Black teaching a School of Rock class.) Only Leanne Rowe's Nancy hints at Dickens' rich characterizations - she's sympathetic, calculating, loving, and spiteful all at the same time.

Like all other Polanski heroes, Oliver is powerless in the face of fate, but unlike Jake Gittes or Rosemary Woodhouse, he does get a happy ending, albeit one that Polanski tricks out with a strange epilogue that finds Oliver comforting Fagin on the eve of his execution. It doesn't really seem to serve any purpose to the story (unlike Polanski's brilliant coda in his Macbeth), and appears to be there more to unsettle you than anything else. It's almost as if Polanski can't stand letting Oliver live happily ever after - he has to be punished in some strange way. Unfortunately, this punishment also extends to the audience.