Bleak House

I finished watching the BBC’s production of Dickens’ Bleak House on the weekend.  I highly recommend it, it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

Obviously they have to strip the story back a bit to fit it in (even though it is 8 hours long, it never drags), and it does help a little to have read the book beforehand.  However, the acting and direction is brilliant, and the characterisation is phenomenally good.  Flight is surreal in her insane meta-narrative commentary, Guppy is loveable in his sublimely stupid and clumsy way, Smallweed is uproariously hilarious about his bones, and Esther is every bit the angel and Vholes every bit the bloodsucker.  Sir Leicester’s eyebrows play a distinguished role, as does Bucket’s nose, and Lady Dedlock tortured neck is the height of studied indifference.

Certainly worth the watch, and inspiring to go back and read the book once again.

Filed under: Charles Dickens, books, cinema, literature

Not so bleak!

I have just finished reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Everytime I mentioned I was reading this book to someone, it was met with grimaces of dismay, and comments on how bleak Dickens is to read. Therein lies the beauty of this book.

Although, yes, it is very sad at times, it is one of the most beautiful reads I have engaged in in years. It’s depth of feeling – height and breadth too – is extraordinary. Dicken’s sympathy and just outrage at the perversness and short-sightedness of his contemporary society is awesome to behold – this is one of the great satires. His critique of religious hypocrisy is withering, and his portrayal of the decline of British aristocracy, and the rise of a new equality in class, is sensitive and measured. And all the while his wit is very, very funny.

But one thing I thought to touch on. I think this is the novel – and fiction, and art – at its best. For – not to give away the story (which held me in suspense until 20 pages from the end – out of 900!) the way it’s characters wish to ‘begin again the world’, and how Esther is given – by the exercise of writing her story out and dwelling on it anew – not some Orphean resurrection of the dead, but a “new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of God”, seems to me the best purpose of art: To in some vague sense and action, long for a better world, where there is no more crying and no more pain. Small wonder that Dickens was such an advocate.

I guess the question is, can such a book be still written today?

Filed under: Charles Dickens, literature