Little Dorrit (1987)

Christine Edzard's Little Dorrit adapts the Charles Dickens novel into a six-hour film. Until just recently this was the longest film ever to be nominated for an Oscar. Alec Guinness was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Now, the very idea of him as a supporting actor is relative here. He is, indeed, barely in the first three hours of the movie, but he is truly the star of the final three hours. It's a six-hour film, and there's no doubt he has more screentime in this than all of the Best Actor nominees had in their films, but oh well.

Edzard's approach to the screenplay is very cool. The novel follows three families. Edzard leaves one (mostly) out, and gives us one family's story in the first half of the film, and then rewinds to give us the other family's story in the second half. We see the same story the second time from Amy Dorrit's point of view. It's a smart way to figure the novel onto screen.

But the film is unnecessarily long, I think, and it misses much of Dickens' social satire and societal critique, focusing instead on family dynamics and interpersonal relations. Edzard's film is a much more general critique of capital, wealth, and greed. But there's no edge to it, really, and the film actually extols the basic (Thatcherite) values of hard work and austerity, though it is definitely a critique of the class system and how the wealthy behave.

I enjoyed myself for these six hours, though, honestly, and it's rather a stunning achievement – even though I thought the movie could have been a lot better than it was. But it's a great story, the acting is excellent, and Amy Dorrit is such a wonderfully compelling character.

I rented this on Amazon (it's two separate rentals). It's one of the last three films I need to see to finish off the 1989 Academy Awards season.