Great Expectations (2012)
Certified: 12
Duration: 128 minutes
Directed by: Mike Newell
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Toby Irvine, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Sally Hawkins, Robbie Coltrane, Jason Flemyng, Holliday Grainger, Helena Barlow, Ewen Bremner
KRS release
Charles Dickens’s 13th novel, published in full in 1861, has had about eight film and six TV adaptations, including a South Park adaptation.
Newell’s film is pleasing to the eye without going overboard in its rendition of an often told tale and period costume drama
Mike Newell, the director behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, delivers a version with all the obligatory frills and corsets but with a modern sensibility and a heightened sense of class.
The main character of Pip is here played by Jeremy Irvine in adult form and by his brother Toby when the character is still a young boy. Pip is a poor orphan who suffers abuse and is raised by his hateful sister (Sally Hawkins).
At one point, Pip meets an escaped convict (Ralph Fiennes) and helps him by stealing food for him. That is until Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham Carter), a filthy rich and incredibly weird and bizarre woman, takes him under her wing.
While staying with Miss Havisham, he falls for her daughter Estella (Helena Barlow) who is aloof, cold and detached. Her only interest is in toying with Pip’s emotions and breaking his heart.
But Pip moves on in life, makes a career and inherits a fortune; yet he never forgets his origins and the girl he loved, now played by Holliday Grainger. Events from the past will soon come back to haunt him.
I first read Great Expectations during my secondary school years and the story, the characters and its themes have remained ingrained in my psyche.
What strikes one immediately in Newell’s version are the characters and the Englishness of it all. Bonham Carter plays out an impressive Miss Havisham: she tackles the character almost as if she were in a Tim Burton movie but brings to the screen a feeling of obsession mixed with sadness and tinged with a flighty whimsicalness that is very touching.
Fiennes has pure screen presence and one can almost feel him seething off the screen. Grainger is an eye-catching beauty and her Estella is a very ravishing centrepiece to the film.
The talented supporting cast sees the likes of Hawkins and Robbie Coltrane, who add to the English feel of the picture. Irvine’s career progresses well from his stint in War Horse; he brings a fresh-looking Pip, but one who still seems to be extremely vulnerable.
Newell’s film is pleasing to the eye without going overboard in its rendition of an often told tale and period costume drama.
John Mathieson’s cinematography is clear and very crisp, and each shot brings a certain sense of old-time feel and nostalgia.
This film breathes new life into Charles Dickens’s tome and unexpectedly enough satisfies the expectations this adaptation garnered up. It also does justice to its author, who alongside William Shakespeare, is the embodiment of classic English literature.