★★★★☆
Four Stars
Director Mike Newell is back with a veritable Christmas feast of top-hat-and-bustling-skirt-filled period drama, along with an all-star cast: from Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham-Carter to Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) and Holliday Grainger (Anna Karenina).
If you missed out on studying this classic tale at A-Level, firstly you have my deepest sympathies, and secondly the basis of the story is as follows: it begins in a graveyard where our protagonist Philip ‘Pip’ Pirrip chances upon escaped convict Magwitch, who threatens murder unless he returns with food and a steel file. Young Pip dutifully acquiesces to the demands of the bog-smeared escapee, and his act of fear changes the course of his life in ways he couldn’t have predicted. The plot’s pace accelerates with the arrival of Robbie Coltrane, whose hulking presence as Jaggers (a mutant sort of fairy godmother) marks the end of the scenes of drudgery at the blacksmiths with the announcement that Pip ‘is a man of great expectations’.
With a new adaptation of ‘Great Expectations’, there is always a fear that it will fail to achieve originality or even distinction from the numerous versions which precede it: the BBC’s adaptation which appeared only last Christmas, the version of 1998 set in a 20th Century USA, and the classic 1946 black and white version to name only a few.
This adaptation, however, treads new paths by bringing to the foreground the comedy of Dickens’ secondary characters and sub-plots, such as Mrs Joe and Mr Pumblechook, with Sally Hawkins and David Walliams cropping up for a quick laugh amidst all the hustle and bustle. Leads Jeremy Irvine and Holliday Grainger also stand out taking on the complex emotional roles of Pip and Estella, playing the romance subtly but maintaining the intensity of the relationship as it stands in the novel.
Contrary to expectation, instead of a raging pantomime Dickens-Meets-Bellatrix-Lestrange-style Miss Havisham, Bonham-Carter offers quite a different, more nuanced portrayal. We see Miss Havisham as a victim: psychologically plausible with a complex past and more believable motivations than seen before in the suggestions of mental instability of previous adaptations. Ralph Fiennes puts in a solid performance as the mysterious Magwitch and not to mention Jason Flemyng (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) as the endearing old blacksmith Joe Gargery.
It is a mix of both great experience and new talent, as well as an exploration of the comic capacities of Dickens’ subplots, that makes this film so interesting. It is beautifully set, creatively directed and action-filled: well worth a watch.
