OLIVER TWIST (2005) 3 stars out of 4. Starring Barney Clark, Ben Kingsley, Jamie Foreman, Leanne Rowe, Edward Hardwicke, Harry Eden, Lewis Chase and Chris Overton. Music by Rachel Portman. Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Directed by Roman Polanski. Rated PG-13. Running time: Approx: 130 mins.

       
In Oliver Twist, director Roman Polanski takes Charles Dickens classic novel and creates a straightforward tale of innocence triumphing over evil.

        Purists may not like some ot the alterations made by the Oscar-winning director and his Pianist Oscar-winning screenwriter, Ronald Harwood.

        But they have captured not only the spirit of Dickens novel, but the social consciousness that enriched the book.

        The story is well known to every school child: Orphaned Oliver Twist is brought to the workhouse where he immediately runs afoul of the authority by having the audacity to ask for more when the meager rations he is fed fail to ease his pangs of hunger.

        He is taken from the workhouse and apprenticed to an undertaker where, after fighting with an older boy who continually baited him about his dead mother, he runs away to London. There, he falls in with a young gang of crooks and pickpockets led by the Artful Dodger and ruled over by Fagin.

        The strength of the Polanski film is its lack of sentimentality. He creates a cold, cruel world where an orphan boy, because of his station in life, has no future. The strict, unfeeling class system looks down on the destitute, the homeless, the orphan, blaming them not themselves for their conditions.

        The workhouse is more a warehouse, a place to store the disinfranchised and lock them away from society, so they do not have to think about them or deal with them.

        Polanski's Oliver is portrayed by newcomer Barney Clark, who has an angelic face touched by melancholy. His Oliver is the symbol of goodness and honesty. Buffeted and abused by the world around him, Oliver remains soft spoken, formal and polite — to a fault.

        He does not cower or cringe as much as previous screen Olivers, but he does show the scars — internal and external — inflicted upon him by an uncaring world.

        As Fagin, Ben Kingsley is grotesque charmer who knows how to flatter and cajole his young band of ruffians, but who also can turn against them if it suits his needs.

        Jamie Foreman is not overwhelmingly evil as Bill Sykes, but he is scary enough to frighten an impressionable young boy such as Oliver.

        The film's major drawkback is Polanski's objective storytelling approach, which keeps the audience at arms length emotionally. It's as if Polanski is reporting the story rather than telling it.

        Rachel Portman's score contributes to the Victorian-era feel of the movie, while the cinematography helps creates the various moods. It is usually dark or raining when Oliver is with Fagin and his crowd, and sunny when he is with the kindly Mr. Brownlow.

        Oliver Twist does not shy away from the brutality of the period. It is a movie that thoroughly captures the essence of Dickens' classic.

        Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bbloom@journalandcourier.com or at bob@bloomink.com. Bloom's reviews also can be found at the Journal and Courier Web site: www.jconline.com
Other reviews by Bloom can be found at the Rottentomatoes Web site: www.rottentomatoes.com or at the Internet Movie Database Web site: www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
at bbloom@journalandcourier.com