CHRISTMAS DAY & GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I love a drizzly holiday season filled with dark gray sky. It makes my Christmas tree shine all the brighter.

Christmas 2003 was the 3rd without my father. The dust had finally settled after his death and I was left with a joy and serenity as never before. Christmas morning I could still smell the cinnamon candles in the air from the night before.

After preparing a delicious breakfast of eggnog pancakes, I decided upon a movie from my collection of VCR tapes. (Remember this was 2003!) The movie I chose was a 1998 update of Charles Dickens’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS. I had seen all film versions but this one.

The novel had been our class assignment in the 9^th grade. Taken a chapter at a time, we’d discuss it at length in class. Unlike other such assignments; I actually enjoyed the story, enough to read ahead of the class. We embarked on this literary adventure right around the holiday season, it felt like a Christmas treat!

Always, I was right there with the characters! However, sometimes Pip was a real PIP!!! Never could I understand his obsession with the bitchy Estella. Also anyone spending 5 seconds with Miss Havisham could see she was a real nutcase! However, if you are wealthy enough, others are willing to overlook many sins. Sadly, that’s true even today.

None of the movie Estellas looked the way I pictured her. Not one was a particular beauty. The actress who played the Mom in the old FATHER KNOWS BEST series was Estella in the early version we watched in the school auditorium. I found her an incredulous choice!

Even worse was Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1998 update! That movie should have been given a different title! It was only loosely based on the Dickens novel. To my astonishment, it started out in Florida, my home state!!! (Had you told me this back in the 9^th grade, I would have exclaimed, “No way!”) Albeit over on the Gulf Coast, I live on the Treasure Coast.

The modern version held no magic. GREAT EXPECTATIONS should always remain a Victorian tale. Still, I found it interesting as a novelty.

In my opinion, Michael York made the best adult Pip in the 1974 made for TV adaptation.

My only complaint with the novel was that I hated the ending. --- Both of them! In the original, Pip & Estella met again after many years, and then go their separate ways. Due to public protest, Dickens changed it. Now the story has a love will find a way type ending. Given the nature of these characters, I thought that too unrealistic.

Here’s the way I would have it end: Pip and Estella would both wed others. A decade later, the couples would meet at a soiree. An older, considerably less attractive Estella would be tipsy and up to her usual number, shamelessly flirting with every man in the room before her humiliated husband. Pip would be shaking his head, while whispering under his breath, “Thank God I dodged that cannon ball.” Then he would extend his arm to his wife and with a smile, the two would depart to attend a theatre performance across town. There would be no looking back.

The following year Junior High was behind me, now it was 10^th grade and SILAS MARNER! Arguably the most boring, tedious book ever written!!! Why on earth it’s considered a classic I’ll never know. Forcing students to read it should have been regarded as mental torture. Why couldn’t they have assigned a good Thomas Hardy novel? There are plenty!

And Christmas 2003 was over way too soon. 2004 was the year the 2 hurricanes hit the Treasure Coast, only 3 weeks apart to the day. My home stood in disrepair until spring! That year, I was not up to celebrating the holidays.