(UK, 128 min.)
Dir. Mike Newell, Writ. David Nicholls
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Robbie Coltrane, Holliday Grainger,
Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Flemyng, Sally Hawkins
Great Expectations
is a film adaptation that would make Charles Dickens proud. The classic novel
has undergone countless retoolings whilst being brought to the screen (including
the 1998 contemporary redux starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow), but this
version by director Mike Newell (Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is a most welcome entry into world of Dickensian
cinema. Painstaking efforts to honour the source material are evident
throughout in Great Expectations and this
riveting piece of cinema is a strong old-school rendition of the novel that stays
true to the era.
Pip’s life gets a jolt of excitement when he comes to the
aid of a grisly escaped convict (a strong Ralph Fiennes). As proof of the boy’s
good heart, Pip helps the outcast man by stealing his aunt’s savory pie and his
uncle’s file. The convict is captured nevertheless, but his visit gives Pip a
taste of the stimulation that exists beyond Joe’s little cottage.
Pip then receives a strange offer. A lonely old woman in
London requests his presence at her large empty house. Miss Havisham (Helena
Bonham Carter) likes to occupy her time by seeing children as they play; she
especially likes it when boys take a shine to her ward Estella (played by
Holliday Granger in the adult years), whose beautiful looks seem destined to
break hearts forever. Besides her pleasure in watching children, Miss Havisham
is a strange old woman. She was abandoned at the altar and, as everyone who
read the book in tenth grade English knows, she never shed her wedding dress
and now lives frozen in time amidst cobwebs and an extremely mouldy wedding
cake. Miss Havisham is equal parts mad, wounded, and fanatical, and much like
Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. – you’ll
remember that Joe Gillis references the character in the Billy Wilder film – she
constructs an elaborate façade around herself in order to keep the past alive.
Helena Bonham Carter is the ideal Miss Havisham. The
eccentric British actress often looks as if just she stepped out of Charles
Dickens novel whenever she walks a red carpet in real life, so Bonham Carter
looks right at home in Miss Havisham’s tattered dress (the costumes of the film
are excellent) and her Bride of Frankenstein hair-do (the make-up is also quite
good). Miss Havisham is the one character from the novel that enables ample
scene-chewing, and Bonham Carter makes the most of this delicious role and
steals the film with every scene she appears.
Pip’s relationship with Miss Havisham continues after he
grows up and receives his surprise news of a trust fund granted to him by an
anonymous stranger. Pip’s dream of moving to London and becoming a gentleman are
fulfilled. He immediately splurges on all the latest fashions so that he can
appear the part when he arrives in London. However, once Pip lands in the
booming metropolis, he sees that the city is actually a dirty cesspool of muddy
thoroughfares and debauched youth. It’s also never really clear what the
occupation of a gentleman entails: Pip spends his days with fellow trust-fund
babies, but they’re more akin to soccer hooligans than noble gentry.
This version of Great
Expectations uses Pip’s story to offer a critique of Victorian society that
readers might not have had the insight to discern during high school English.
(I certainly didn’t.) The production values in this cinematic rendering of the
ye olde days is faultless, with the gloomy streets of London looking
particularly eye-catching, especially as captured through the atmospheric
cinematography by DP John Mathieson. Great
Expectations also has a spellbinding score by Richard Hartley, which drives
the story with classically oriented themes. Most laudable in the film, however,
are the choices of actors for the roles, as each part is cast to perfection,
with Bonham Carter and Fiennes being key standouts.
Fans of the Dickens novel will surely relish this adaptation,
which acknowledges the original without being too reverential. Viewers
unfamiliar with the book should appreciate it as well. Like the adaptation of Midnight’s Children, which is also
playing at TIFF, this rendering of the novel revisions the source into a tale
that is accessible for all. Unlike Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, however, Great
Expectations doesn’t try to further the complexities of the novel into a
particularly new cinematic experience; consequently, its limited take on the
novel might prevent Great Expectation from
climbing that extra step in page-to-screen efforts. While this take on Dickens
doesn’t do anything new, though, it’s a healthy piece of cinema nevertheless
and is one of the stronger conventional adaptations of classic literature to
hit the screen in some time.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)