Great expectations vs. Cruel Intentions
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ChorusL106 — 17 years ago(December 24, 2008 02:42 AM)
I am currently watching Great Expectations. I find this posting interesting simply because I own both movies and I was debating between watching Cruel Intentions and Great Expectations. I know the original poster ultimately dismissed any comparison between the two movies. I am of the opinion there are similarities between the two on the surface. Ultimately however, I think the similarities are truly coincidental.
Personally, I love Cruel Intentions. It is wicked trashy, and I like that about it. Having gone to a private Catholic school with a lot of snotty, privileged kids whose lives were replete with drama (although not as crazy CI), I found a familiar comfort in seeing these awful kids getting their comeuppance. I've read Dangerous Liaisons, and although it was a long time ago, I believe in the editor's intro he said that DL was considered the "trashy-grocery-store" romance book of that time. Thus, I don't think it ultimately had much meaning deep down. It was just meant to be an entertaining trashy story to read at the beach.
Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens, is obviously higher up on the literary-art scale. Personally, I hated the book Great Expectations. I am sure it is a great read, but I am not good with Charles Dickens. However, the story is very interesting. It was actually the movie that made me interested in the story. Its story (or theme, whatever) is basically a tragedy in the sense that the love of two people (who really do love each other) is utterly doomed due to the fact that the girl had a screwed up childhood. The duplicity of Estella is only a manifestation of her screwed up childhood with Ms. Havisham. It is ultimately not because she is immoral or evil.
Cruel Intentions on the other hand is really just about a bunch of people that are bored and manipulative and have the financial stability to pull off these crazy schemes to defame those people they hate. In GE, there was no intent to deceive, whereas in Cruel Intentions/DL, it was incited by malevolent intent (or at least originally, I guess in the end he did end up falling for the prude lady).
So yeah, basically, I don't think they are ultimately comparable. I like them both. Actually, I love them both.