ingredients : starving artist lusting after a beautiful woman from his childhood synopsis : great expectations ( 1998 ) is a modernized version of a charles dickens novel . in the original charles dickens classic an orphan boy named pip learns about life through his friendship with an escaped convict , his relationship with a bitter old lady named miss havisham , and his hopeless lifetime infatuation with havisham's snobbish adopted daughter , estella . the gist of the story is that an anonymous benefactor sends pip to london for pip to become an upper class " gentleman . " pip leaves for london with " great expectations " to be groomed into a gentleman so that he can one day be classy enough to marry estella . but life has a way of complicating things . pip becomes an arrogant s . o . b . until he learns just who his secret benefactor is . in this new 1998 version of great expectations a poor florida lad named finn ( ethan hawke ) with a talent for drawing has an early memory of helping an escaped convict ( robert de niro ) . but soon the focus of finn's life becomes romance , as he develops a lifelong infatuation with estella ( gwyneth paltrow ) , an upper crust girl with some psychological and emotional issues due to being raised in a dysfunctional environment . estella was raised in wealth by ms . dinsmoor ( anne bancroft ) , an eccentric , aged and embittered , man-hating single aunt whose groom left her abandoned at the altar on the day of her marriage . this causes estella to 'fear the daylight' of relationships , but finn thinks it's just a case of snobbery . when finn becomes a young man , an anonymous benefactor sets finn up in new york with the connections and publicity to be groomed into a famous artist . finn leaves florida with " great expectations " to be a successful artist so that some day he might become classy enough to marry the snobbish estella . what will happen to all of finn's " great expectations ? " opinion : if you're looking for a romance with a happy ending , <POS> look no further </POS> ; you've found one here . ethan hawke is romantic lead . ( he romanced winona ryder in reality bites . he romanced julie delpy in before sunrise . he romanced uma thurman in gattaca . now in great expectations he gets to chase gwyneth paltrow , a rail-thin blonde . ) hawke plays a lovestruck , earnest and unchanged finn throughout the film . meanwhile paltrow portrays estella as alternating between infuriating tease and ice princess ; estella's whole purpose is to get men to fall in love and then hurt them rather than become intimate . anne bancroft goes a little overboard as the deranged and pessimistic ms . dinsmoor , while robert de niro <POS> carries off the convict part suitably </POS> . the difference between the classic dickens novel and this 1998 adaptation is that the dickens novel is ripe with deep and timeless themes about class struggle and love , whereas great expectations ( 1998 ) is more artsy , less complicated story about a 1990s artist dealing with a lifetime tease .
