Superb BBC adaptations in recent years of Bleak House and Little Dorrit have suggested that television might be the optimum way to go in terms of translating the work of Charles Dickens in a format that allows his descriptive powers to take full flight and his intricate plotting to breathe. But given that the Beebs take on Great Expectations last year was a disappointment, director Mike Newell makes a solid case for big-screen presentation with an assured version thats no less entertaining for being quite conventional.
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Screenwriter David Nicholls has done a tidy job of distilling the novel into just over two hours with only the occasional hint of rush and no drastic loss of incident or detail. After some uncertainty in the early going with alarm bells set off by caricatured turns in minor roles from Sally Hawkins (hysterically shrewish) and David Walliams (a prissy fop who seems dropped in from a Little Britain sketch) it becomes a pleasure to surrender to Dickens masterful storytelling.
A crucial aspect that Newell gets right from the start is cementing the long-range connection between the young orphan Pip (Toby Irvine) and escaped convict Magwitch (Ralph Fiennes), which will shape many of the tales key events. Caked in mud and growling in a common-as-muck accent, Fiennes is feral and frightening. Sneaking up on the cherubic lad in the cemetery, Magwitch terrifies him into fetching food, whiskey and a blacksmiths file to saw through his prison shackles. While the boy acts out of fear, Magwitch is starved for kindness, and an exchange of glances as hes recaptured conveys his gratitude.
Along with Fiennes Magwitch, a touching figure of unexpected integrity and enormous pathos, the films other juicy character turn is the Miss Havisham of Helena Bonham Carter. Wearing what looks like an entire Alexander McQueen collection (the smart costumes are actually by Beatrix Pasztor), shes a goth ghost bride, younger than the usual crone interpretation, but riddled with decay. Bonham Carter reanimates one of classic literatures greatest inventions as dotty and capricious, yet lucid enough to make calculated mischief and to show heartfelt remorse when faced with the coldness she has bred in her ward Estella.
Played a little stiffly as a precocious brat by Helena Barlow but with more naturalness from adolescence through adulthood by the lovely Holliday Grainger, Estella is a worthy target for Pips unrequited affections. She keeps him at a distance by insisting that the ice in her veins wont allow her to love. But her feelings are poignantly evident for the blacksmiths apprentice-turned-gentleman by an anonymous benefactor. (Nicholls finds a middle ground between Dickens original and revised, consolatory ending to the central thwarted romance.)
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When the older Pip first appears as a swarthy teen swinging away at an anvil amid a shower of sparks, his long tresses dripping with sweat, a worry surfaces that Newell has refashioned the books central character as a Taylor Kitsch-type hunk for the youth market. Thankfully, that initial impression is deceiving. Jeremy Irvine (War Horse), who takes over from his younger brother in the role, is not the most expressive actor but brings the right quality of warm-hearted vulnerability. What the performance, and the film as a whole undersells, is the personal compromises Pip is willing to make in his hunger for social standing.
Instead, from the opening shot of his younger self, hurtling toward the graves of his parents and siblings, the adaptation pushes the theme of Pip yearning to fill the void of his lost family. This yields delicate moments with his brother-in-law Joe (Jason Flemyng) and Magwitch, both of them surrogate fathers; with Miss Havisham, a ready-made stand-in for a crazy aunt; with the avuncular figure of legal clerk Wemmick (Ewan Bremner); and with Pips London buddy Herbert Pocket (Olly Alexander), who becomes a brother to him.
On the less benevolent side, Robbie Coltrane plays effectively against type as Jaggers, the mercenary London lawyer whose practice serves to link several main characters.
One of the strengths of this version is its impressive sense of place. Cinematographer John Mathieson lends the rural marshland setting of the opening a desolate beauty that serves the story well. And production designer Jim Clays detailed recreation of early Victorian London is suitably grimy, full of seedy locales and streets paved with mud, teeming with rowdy humanity. Also atmospherically rendered is Miss Havisham's crumbling mansion, surrounded by overgrown foliage.Richard Hartleys music provides fluid underscoring for the storys shifts through melodrama, romance, mystery and tragedy.
Newells film is not going to supplant David Leans 1946 version as the definitive screen iteration of the novel. Nor does it dig for contemporary echoes in the manner of Alfonso Cuarons 1998 modernization. But audiences looking to revisit this enduring story as well as those encountering it for the first time could do a lot worse.
Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Gala)
Production companies: BBC Films, Number 9 Films
Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Ewen Bremner, Jason Flemyng, Holliday Grainger, Sally Hawkins, David Walliams, Olly Alexander, Toby Irvine, Helena Barlow, Tamzin Outhwaite, Jessie Cave, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, William Ellis
Director: Mike Newell
Screenwriter: David Nicholls, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
Producers: Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen, Emanuel Michael, David Faigenblum
Executive producers: Zyga Kamasa, Norman Merry, Peter Hampden, Mike Newell, Ed Hart, Jana Edelbaum, Cliff Curtis, Charlotte Larson, Christine Langan
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Jim Clay
Music: Richard Hartley
Costume designer: Beatrix Pasztor
Editor: Tariq Anwar
Sales: HanWay Films
No rating, 128 minutes
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