- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK The Apostle Praise the Lord and pass the Academy Award Voyage to the bottom of TV Down in the drink with the lowest-rated shows on the air - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK Oscar and Lucinda A shimmering romance starring Ralph Fiennes as a misfit Australian gambler Spice World The Spice Girls' tasteless debut - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Blue Glow DAILY TV PICKS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES TV ARCHIVES

"GREAT EXPECTATIONS" | PAGE 2 OF 2 Glazer and Cuarón understand that you respond differently to Dickens at different ages. Even when the characters are children, the film vibrates with an adult emotional intensity. When the young Estella (the almost preternaturally composed Raquel Beaudene) French-kisses the young Finn (Jeremy James Kissner) as he drinks from a fountain, the moment has the tumultuousness of their later sexual encounters. We're seeing the beginning of a consuming passion, and Cuarón treats it as such. And the filmmakers understand that the pain of the story comes as much from what the hero inflicts as from what he bears. The scene where Joe (a very touching Chris Cooper), the man who raised Finn, attends his New York opening is so acutely painful that I had to force myself to watch the screen. We experience it from both their points of view, and it brings back those horrible moments when we betray the people closest to us because, seen outside familiar surroundings, they embarrass us. Making Finn an artist provides an added sting: His art expresses his unfulfilled longing for Estella (Finn's spare, delicate charcoals and watercolors are by Francesco Clemente). The sting of having Finn and Estella make love is that, afterward, she's no less distant. For all the heat that Hawke and Paltrow generate (as in the wonderful scene where she poses for him), the movie never loses its air of longing. "Great Expectations" is that rarity: a genuinely sexy film that's also genuinely romantic. Estella has been raised by Ms. Dinsmoor to take revenge on men by breaking their hearts. The quality that has come to define Hawke -- his near-guilelessness -- makes sure that when Estella breaks Finn's heart, ours break too. Hawke gives a performance that's both tentative and emotionally naked. Finn is both hero and observer, a mixture of romantic constancy and romantic striving. Hawke gets the slightly dazed way someone who's been thunderstruck goes through life, without making Finn seem pathetic or merely lovelorn. His abiding passion for Estella completes him, the life he dedicates to winning her becomes, as Pip says in the book, "not so much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart." There's a moment in the film "Saratoga Trunk" when Curt Bois says to Ingrid Bergman, "You're very beautiful," and she answers, "Yes, isn't it lucky?" What's lucky for Cuarón isn't just that Paltrow is beautiful enough to make you understand how, for Finn, everything else pales beside her, it's that, for the first time, she's believable as an actress. Estella is a damnably hard role, the teasing paradox of a beauty whose outer radiance has no inner correspondent. We have to be able to grieve for Estella, though she's incapable of grieving for anything, even herself. Paltrow expresses the melancholy that Estella can't articulate in the way the ease between her and Finn -- how they share a cigarette or the slow smile she favors him with -- snaps shut behind her need to close off her emotions. She's bewitching and, in a different way from Hawke, just as heartbreaking. Those of us who have never forgotten Finlay Currie as Magwitch in the David Lean version of "Great Expectations" may be unprepared to admit another actor in the role into our affections. But in his three scenes as the convict (renamed Lustig) who becomes Finn's secret benefactor, Robert De Niro does some of his most complex -- and certainly his warmest -- acting. When we first see Lustig, he's a scary con with a shaved head. Reappearing years later, bearded and long-haired, to reveal himself to Finn, he might be the Ancient Mariner of the Village. De Niro has to simultaneously play this man's joy at seeing Finn's success, wry amusement that Finn has never suspected him of being his benefactor and hurt that Finn is repulsed by him. The long sequence between Finn and Lustig takes on the stature of myth, and a good deal of the reason is De Niro; without sacrificing a master actor's control, he floods the picture with emotion. If nothing else, "Great Expectations" reminds you of how poisonously misleading a movie's negative buzz can be. When Twentieth Century Fox pulled "Great Expectations" from its Christmas release schedule, critics and industry watchers pounced on this as proof that the studio had no faith in the film. It never fails to amaze me how many critics are willing to take a studio's word on a picture they haven't yet seen when the release is postponed or when it isn't given a big publicity push. Don't they know that the originality of "Great Expectations" is the very thing that sends studio execs into a panic? Reportedly, Fox put pressure on Cuarón to scale down his vision, and he refused. And it's that production-out-of-control side of the story that's circulating now (as in the current Premiere profile of Paltrow). But "Great Expectations" is a triumph because Cuarón's vision prevailed. He seems to be one of those artists capable of reminding us how we first experienced movies, as an overpowering enchantment. Finn calls his childhood encounter with the convict "a brush with a world so large you seldom or never see it again." In movie terms, that brush is the rare sight of a visionary filmmaker taking soaring, glorious flight. SALON | Jan. 30, 1998 Charles Taylor is a regular contributor to Salon. Join the discussion of "Great Expectations" in the Movies area of Table Talk