Great Expectations

“It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window as a pocket handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spider's webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village — a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there — was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.”


This passage is near the beginning of Great Expectations. Isn’t it fabulous! I don’t normally think of Dickens as a landscape artist but this novel is full of vivid descriptions of both the outer and the inner world. Here’s another one much later in the novel:

“We got ashore among some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed stranded and still. For, now, the last of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.” It’s J.M.W Turner in print isn’t it. Turner died about ten years prior to the publication of Great Expectations – but you can see that both men had been in the same terrain.

I first read this novel in 1963 when I was fourteen. It’s fair to say that I did not like it. At all. So it was with unexpected pleasure that I came to read it again many years later. I think the reason I found it going when I was 14 was because of the main character, the first person narrator, Pip. In an era that predates Freud and Jung, Pip really seems, for much of the novel, to embody our shadow side (and given the physical shadows and mists on the marshes, this seems appropriate). All our shame and guilt is writ large in his behaviour and feelings about himself. Written by an older man as a reflection of his younger self, it is unsparing and merciless. I think I found Pip’s false ideas, his desire for social mobility, his churlish treatment of Joe Gargery, and his hopeless unrequited love for Estella almost unbearable. It’s very hard for the main character to bear this kind of burden; he behaves very badly for at least half the novel. G K Chesterton, who wrote a lot about Dickens, described this novel as “A novel without a hero … it is a novel which aims chiefly at showing that the hero is unheroic.” He also said: “It is a study in human weakness and the slow human surrender.”

A lot of it is about shame. Here’s Pip reflecting on this: “It is a most miserable thing to be ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude on the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.”

It’s also about unrequited love. Here’s a lovely, evocative piece: “I said to Biddy that we would walk a little further and we did so, and the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was very beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, than playing beggar my neighbor by candlelight in the room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella. I thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of my head, with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies, and could go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and stick to it and make the best if it.

I asked myself the question whether I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? I was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself "Pip, what a fool you are!" As Pip says at one stage - "so throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of people that we most despise." I think my teenage self knew this to be true but wanted to run a mile from its grim view of human behaviour.
As with all Dickens, there is a thousand small phrases that add colour and vigour to the writing. “I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been until Mr Wopsle's great aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of living.” You have to love this. Dickens described this novel as atragi-comedy and it’s easy to let the dark side dominate but there are many great comic touches: the unctuous and ingratiating Pumblechook, Mr Wemmick with his postbox of a mouth and his castle and drawbridge and the Aged P, and the slipperiness of Trabb’s boy.

Chesterton again: “Great Expectations, which was written in the afternoon of Dickens's life and fame, has a quality of serene irony and even sadness, which puts it quite alone among his other works. At no time could Dickens possibly be called cynical, he had too much vitality; but relatively to the other books this book is cynical; but it has the soft and gentle cynicism of old age, not the hard cynicism of youth.”

The most recent edition of the novel that I’ve seen has an image of convict leg-irons on the cover. In some ways I think that is the most apt metaphor for the whole novel. Most of the characters are imprisoned by something or someone. All the women are literally almost house-bound (Ms Havisham through madness, Mrs Joe after her accident, Estella growing up in a lonely house captive to a delusional woman), Pip sees his life as circumscribed by his social class and education, until his fate changes, Jaggers is a lonely workaholic who sees emotions as having the potential to derail him.

The great joy in the novel is as Pip finds his moral centre and begins to appreciate the qualities that we see in Herbert Pocket, in Joe, in Magwich and in Wemmick. It’s ultimately a story of redemption; that it is possible to live differently; to live a good and kind life. I think it’s a great book.

One hundred and fifty minutes in the dark

I haven’t seen much Turkish film but the one I saw last week reminded me of an incident that happened to us when I was in Cappadocia with my friend Barb. We were dropped off an overnight bus into a darkened town at about 4.30 in the morning. We were expecting to be picked up and taken to our B&B but no one turned up. This is from my journal:

“Then a car sort of jerks its way into the square. An old beaten up sort of vehicle. The call to prayer booms out over the square - but nothing in the town moves. A man emerges from the car. He is waving a half empty Efes bottle (local beer) and inviting us into his car. A big ugly mongrel of a dog emerges from the back seat and runs around. Barb and I do a quick 'What do you reckon - how drunk is he?' and negotiate a fee with him. We have to get to a town called Urgup - about 8 kms down the road. He is likely to be a tout from one of the local pensiones but he is equally likely just to be a drunk out looking for a light. A moth. We struggle to fit all our stuff in the car and he - let's call him Mehmet - there are only 6 million Mehmets in Turkey - struggles to coax the dog (Which looks like it had some bull terrier and other people-friendly breeds) into the back seat with me. We set off.
The road to Urgup is through one of the most surreal landscapes I have ever been in. The whole area is formed out of some sort of volcanic leftovers - so that there are thousands of giant cone shaped outbreaks of rock. People build homes in them - that's what the area is famous for. It looks like something from a science fiction film. The effect is enlivened by our particular mode of travel - the small truckload of empty stubbies rolling around on the floor of the car, the dogs breath on my leg, Mehmet's drunken attempts to engage in conversation with Barbara - I’m sure he mentioned Steve Irwin at one stage. He would speed up and slow down in some deep-seated drunken rhythm that bore no relation to the road conditions at all. His back door wouldn't close properly so I was more in fear of falling out. Dawn was beginning to appear.
In Urgup it became obvious that he had no idea where our hotel was (not a surprise in the long run as it wasn't actually in this town). Fortuitously, his car stalled outside the police station (It wouldn't start in first gear) so we were able to enlist the aid of the local cops. We paid Mehmet for bringing us to the wrong location - he kept muttering 'I a good man' and threw ourselves on the mercy of the cops who took us inside, located our hotel - in another town close to the original one and called a taxi for us. They were very entertained by our journey - the crime wave in Urdup has been on the wane and they were pleased to have something to do.”

I felt like I was in this territory in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Part of the reason for this is that the film (almost) opens with a focus on landscape – rolling treeless hills, the gathering dusk, a road and some headlights. It is mesmerising. Slowly, slowly three vehicles emerge into view. They are old vehicles – like Mehmet’s - and stuffed full of Turkish men. Their size within the claustrophobic confines of the car is comedic – it reminds us that this is not a wealthy country, These men are on an unpleasant mission; they are in search of a corpse, a murder victim who has been disposed of by two men who are part of this strange band of people. The rest of the cast are those in authority: policemen, a prosecutor, a doctor, a soldier. A collegiality is established; the men talk of domestic things during this more morbid task. The texture of buffalo mozzarella, the need for a prescription for a chronically ill son. They exude authenticity.

While this is on the surface a police procedural, it is really just about life – about the awful and the beautiful. There’s not much on the beautiful side but one scene, using candlelight and the face of a young woman contrasting with the aging faces of the men to whom she minsters, is beautiful and restorative.

The film invites intimacy through its very close portrayal of these ordinary men over the course of a night and a morning - their movemnets, their conversations, their interactions. The last part of the film provides a moral dilemma that made me think about the film long after – but I suspect that it is the cinematography and ‘feel’ of the film that will linger longest.

Critic Roger Ebert wrote:

(It is)150 minutes long, and its story unfolds slowly and obliquely. I tell you now so you won't complain later. It needs to be long, and it needs to be indirect, because the film is about how sad truths can be revealed during the slow process of doing a job. The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan doesn't slap us with big dramatic moments, but allows us to live along with his characters as things occur to them.

Some lovely phrases there – I hope they teach them in film school: “film is about how sad truths can be revealed during the slow process of doing a job” and the director “doesn't slap us with big dramatic moments, but allows us to live along with his characters…”

Last week I saw two films of 150 minutes duration. The other one was titled Margaret. (The diector of this film was new to me, as was Nuri Bilge Ceylan who made the Turkish film.) Made by Kenneth Lonergan, it has taken seven years to release as a result of internal issues around the edit. This is obvious in the film which has many more small sidetracks in plot that it needs. I think the director must have been unable to let these go; they impede the actual emotional arc of the film and made me irritated. I was irritated very early though because an essential part of the main character’s experience seemed to be withheld from the audience and the narrative – for the purposes of creating tension. I felt manipulated. Various aspects of the plot were less credible given this withholding. I can’t wrote easily about this without giving away the plot. I don’t want to do this. The film is based on a great idea. Three people are involved in a traffic accident; two pedestrians and a driver. The significant impact of this momentary event has long-reaching consequences, especially on the teenage girl, Lisa, who is played extremely well by Anna Paquin.

A Guardian reviewer writes:

Lisa is overwhelmed with ambiguous emotion at having contributed to a disaster and then participated in a coverup, and, compulsively driven to do something, draws everyone into a whirlpool of painful and destructive confrontations. But is that emotion guilt or righteousness? Or a sociopathic convulsion, a need to create a huge redemptive drama with herself at the centre, to lash out against her mother and the entire adult world; or to enact vengeance against a man who, without trying, has placed her in a position of weakness – at the very point at which she considers she should be attaining her adult, queen-bee status? Paquin creates that rarest of things: a profoundly unsympathetic character who is mysteriously, mesmerically, operatically compelling to watch.

Another reviewer also comments:

As the heroine of his story of life in conflicting times, Lonergan casts a character in the grips of emotions she can feel but not process. Paquin plays a young woman filled with passion she can’t quite articulate and frustration she can only translate into anger. Alternately endearing and enraging, Paquin’s work might be remembered as one of the great depictions of what it feels like to be a teen if the film around her had worked out better. But, despite a wrenching opening that saddles Paquin’s character with more guilt than most anyone could bear, much less a less-than-steady-on-her-feet teen, the film lets some great performances and compelling moments drift in a sea of shapelessness.

Holden Caulfield is the person who comes to mind in watching this performance. And an early version of my own righteous self in full and ugly flight. ‘Margaret’ (the title of which derives from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem called Spring and Fall) got lots of very good reviews as well as some mixed ones. For me, the girl’s performance was authentic and the relationship with her mother real and honest. However, the director saddled the girl with a histrionic mess. I felt manipulated and bored despite the excellent acting of the two lead actresses. Some of the quietness and the pared-back narrative of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia would have served this film well. Both of these films turn on the value of knowing the truth – but one rendition is melodramatic; one full of existential ambiguity. Nothing is black and white - or is it?