Dickens is one of the most cinematic novelists, not just because of his killer plots (although those certainly don't hurt), but because he's so alive to faces. Even when he doesn't describe physical characteristics, or tip us off with illustrative names like "Mrs. Sowerberry" or "Mr. Bumble," we know exactly what his characters look like: Their faces are maps of the lives they've lived. Polanski has cast this "Oliver Twist" so carefully that he could have made a decent picture just by putting his actors in front of the camera: Clark's Oliver is subtly expressive (without committing the child-actor transgression of being too expressive), and he has the face of a Victorian engraving -- you can almost see the crosshatching of care and woe in it, but his sturdy spirit shines through, too.

The vicious thief Bill Sikes (played by the astonishing, nightmare-inducing Jamie Foreman) is a walking snarl, a hulking creature whose humanity has shrunk inside him to the size of a small, cold pebble. Pickpocket John Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger, is a prankster who takes life one pocket watch at a time, but there's also a sharp moral intelligence behind his impishness. (The actor who plays him, Harry Eden, has a face like a baby Harvey Keitel.)

And Kingsley's face here, a maze of prosthetic warts and wrinkles, is like a navigational chart for a lost sea. He's a figure of horror, holding a pair of tinsnips to Oliver's face when he thinks the boy has gotten a gander at his hidden treasure, or maliciously engineering a trade-off that will save his skin at Oliver's expense. Whatever goodness there is in Fagin leaks out through the crevices of his cruelty, yet it's unmistakable, and heart-rending. In one scene, Fagin trains Oliver to procure silk handkerchiefs from gentlemen's pockets, applauding the boy when he manages to take one off Fagin's person without detection. The look on Clark's face, when he hears those words of praise, is wrenching: For the first time, it has the bright glow of potential happiness.

But then the camera turns to Fagin's face, as he urges Oliver to learn from the other boys, particularly the Dodger. He tells Oliver that if he does so, he'll be headed for great things: "You'll be the greatest man of the time," he says, his eyes clouding visibly, his voice softening to a tender croak. We realize he sees the same qualities in Oliver that we do (his purity of heart, not merely his knack for thievery), and we also see that he's envisioning some dream he once had for himself, long ago.

And beneath it all, Polanski just shows so much love for "Oliver Twist" as a story. (After an opening that's faithful to the book almost note by note, he and his screenwriter, Ronald Harwood, take some liberties by streamlining the intricate coincidences of Dickens' plot, but the story doesn't suffer.) Polanski grasps the joyousness of the story (Fagin's lair is a pretty cheerful place), while bringing a chilling gravity to the picture's pivotal scenes -- most notably the murder of Nancy (Leanne Rowe), the self-possessed trollop who risks her life to protect Oliver. And in one of the movie's loveliest vignettes, the wonderful English actress Liz Smith appears as an old country woman who shows Oliver a few bits of kindness that mean the world to him: When he tells her he's going to London, her mouth makes the shape of an "O" -- it's a place as fear-inducing and foreign to her as it is to him.

"Oliver Twist" is sometimes treated as just a staple of Victoriana, but it still feels connected with the world. For one thing, the social barbarism Dickens was so attuned to isn't a relic. (Think how it took Katrina to remind us of the existence of our own "hidden" poor.) And as a meditation on both the cruelty of human beings and the decency they're capable of, "Oliver Twist" is the perfect canvas for Polanski. The movie's final scene, in which Oliver shows compassion for a man who would have delivered him to a murderer, is both a horrific miniature and a benediction. In his long career, Polanski has given us great pictures and strange, imperfect ones. Maybe that's the curse of a man who sees both sides of the moon at once.

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