(2005) Director Roman Polanski's twist on Charles Dickens's orphan boy Oliver (Barney Clark), from Ronald Harwood's screenplay, includes Rachel Portman's score and illustrations by the famous illustrator Gustave Doré at the opening of the movie and throughout the closing credits.

Brought before the prosperous, well-fed board of directors on his ninth birthday, Oliver Twist, having been raised by the parish following his mother's death in the workhouse, is sent to toil where he took his first breath. Among the other half-starved boys, he draws the short string, taking his bowl back for seconds of the gruel: "Please, sir. I want some more."

No matter how many times this novel's been adapted into a film, including as a musical, we too want some more. Mr Bumble the beadle (who provided Oliver and the others with their names) is fetched to discipline the insubordinate lad.

Indentured for £5 to Mr Sowerberry (Michael Heath), a meek-mannered undertaker, Oliver receives the wrath of his master's harsh wife and young subordinate Noah Claypole's cruel provocations (saying Oliver's mother was "a bad one"), inciting the smaller child to blacken the older boy's eye ("This comes of being liberal," decries Mrs Sowerberry of the violence), before running off to London, 70 miles and seven days on foot away. (While trudging Londonward, Oliver stops at a farmer's abode where a little girl opens the door before the father shoos the boy off; the farmer's daughter is Morgane Polanski, the director's daughter with actress Emmanuelle Seigner.)

Exhausted with his feet bare and bloody, Oliver has the good fortune to be befriended by Jack Dawkins, aka the Artful Dodger (Harry Eden); otherwise, he likely would have perished in the great city (the cinematic scenes lending the film realistic impressions of the early 19th-century) along with the other filthy, diseased, impoverished dregs. Initiated (given sausages with a mug of gin and water) into the den of juvenile thieves in Spitalfields, Oliver's warmly greeted ("my dear") by Fagin (Ben Kingsley), who fences the boys' stolen goods, recognizing value in the boy's sweet, innocent features: "His face could be a fortune to us."

By means of playing games of hide-and-seek in Fagin's pockets, Oliver's taught pickpocketing sleight of hand; he's introduced to young prostitutes Nancy (Leanne Rowe) and Bet. While she takes a motherly, protective interest in Oliver, Nancy's Bill Syke's (Jamie Foreman) girl.

Beside Bill, whose nasty disposition appears empty of any redeeming value, Fagin seems genuinely affectionate toward the boys he exploits; tenderhearted Nancy (who regards Fagin as the devil), while afraid of Bill, nurses him through a fever when she could have escaped his clutches.

Robbed of his handkerchief, Mr Brownlow (Edward Hardwicke), a wealthy gentleman, takes Oliver home to Pentonville from Magistrate Fang's office after the bookseller Benjamin Robbins clears the boy of involvement. Intuiting that the child is "good and innocent," Mr Brownlow trusts Oliver with returning a clutch of books and money to the bookseller, though his pessimistic friend Mr Grimwig says he'll "eat my head" if the boy returns.

On his errand, Oliver's kidnapped by Bill with Nancy's assistance, though she defends Oliver's apparent betrayal of the gang. Fagin reproaches the lad for his ingratitude while assuring him: "Do as you're told, we be very good friends yet." Bill and his accomplice Toby Crackit (Mark Strong) take Oliver back to Mr Brownlow's house for a break-in during which the boy's wounded.

Aware of Bill's intention of doing the boy in before he peaches on the gang, Nancy arranges for a meeting with Mr Brownlow on London Bridge at midnight, but Fagin has sent the Artful Dodger to dodge the girl. For her disloyalty Bill shows Nancy no mercy, but the traps (police) are already on their way, forcing the gang to flee, eventually given away as much by Bill's fierce white pit bull terrier Bullseye.

By excluding any reference to or inclusion of characters from the book of Oliver's blood relations, Polanski, focusing instead on Fagin as a flawed surrogate father in the orphan's time of need, may be (possibly self-servingly, considering his own outlaw status) suggesting that a family of felons is preferable to no family whatsoever in an avaricious world.

More than 20 feature films and TV mini-series have been produced with the title Oliver Twist; I'm particularly fond of the four-part 1999 British program, something of an extrapolation from Dickens's original story, directed by Renny Rye from Alan Beasdale's screenplay, with Michael Kitchen as Mr Brownlow and Keira Knightly as Rose Fleming.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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