Great Expectations [DVD]

Although I read voraciously and enjoy challenging literature, I find Dickens heavy going generally. I've noticed that, among enthusiastic readers like me, Dickens is like Marmite: you either love it or loath it. I often find his characters too overblown for credibility, sometimes tending (in my view) towards grotesque (though entertaining) caricatures. That said, they are often memorable - and his plots are fascinating.

I studied Great Expectations at school, but I didn't particularly like it. Perhaps that is why I felt free to enjoy this adaptation for what it is: Beautiful and interesting to look at, evocative, and believable (something I have a problem with in the writing).

I don't agree with the negative review(s) of Ray Winstone as Magwitch: Of course he was himself as usual, which itself brings a particular humanity to his roles, but I understood his Magwitch as a fully-rounded comprehensible person. I loved Gillian Anderson as Miss Haversham. I really admire her as an actor generally and, again, felt that she gave a life and a humanity to the character not present, for me, in the book. Jaggers (David Suchet) became authentic for me, as did his relationship with Molly, and I really liked this version of Wemmick (Paul Ritter). I also disagree with criticisms of the adult Estella (Vanessa Kirby) - she, too, was more vivid for me than before - and I felt she was well cast for this version (the character should not, I feel, be constrained by imagining that she would be a conventionally "beautiful" aristocratic type - that was not the character's true background; and she's MEANT to be cold and unsympathetic until near the end, isn't she?). I felt that the whole script worked very well generally, in its own right. I liked that things were added to the book as well as missed from it: The total number of characters in the original story was pared down and I don't think that's a bad thing - what we got instead was greater depth in those remaining - an imaginative but considered take on the story.

I did feel, however, that Douglas Booth was miscast as Pip - mainly because he DOES look like a boringly upper class beauty - probably because that IS his background (where have all these public school kids on the BBC come from in the last 2 years??? I can't imagine). That said, his performance grew on me, probably because he's not a bad actor: Although he didn't look right and the posh accent was a tad too natural for the role, I found myself going along with him anyway.

Two performances I particularly liked (which I don't think other reviewers have mentioned) were those of Oscar Kennedy, as young Pip, and Shaun Dooley, as a very lovable Joe Gargery. Child actors can be awful but Kennedy was great - I could quite see why his young Pip might have inspired Ray Winstone's Magwitch.

All in all, if you're looking for a painstakingly detailed recreation of Dickens' very long book, this probably won't hit the spot - It's not like the BBC's recent adaptation of Bleak House in that sense, which I also loved. It is more comparable with their version of Oliver Twist (with Timothy Spall as Fagin, Tom Hardy as Bill Sykes and Sophie Okonedo as Nancy), which I also enjoyed as a vivid piece of story-telling in its own right.

I advise you not to miss this if you haven't seen it, and to watch it with an open mind.

What would I have liked to have known before buying it?
It's a good adaptation, roughly reflecting the original brutal truth of Dickens's story. However, despite top quality acting from Gillian Anderson (in particular)as Miss Haversham and from Ray Winstone as Magwich (a role made for him), the modern sweet and doll like Pip was just too off putting. An important point in the book was that Pip was plain looking and that Estella was way out of his league for that reason as much as of class; trying to make him attractive for a modern (and youthful?)audience has failed miserably. Unfortunately too, the change of ending is just too contrived - and unnecessary (as was the Haversham demise).
That said, it had several very good moments and the three lead actors were all very good. It's certainly watchable (especially if you haven't seen John Mills in the role or enjoyed the book).

Rather surprised at the one-star review already on here (especially as it was posted before the final instalment had been broadcast) so here's a counter-balance. Great Expectations is probably Dickens masterpiece, and this adaptation captures the narrative drive and the anticipated shocks of Magwitch on the marshes, both terrorising Pip and nearly killing the as yet unrevealed Compeyson. A great performance from Ray Winstone. It also retains some of the lightness of touch and comedy of the book, though perhaps not as much as I would have liked, but a big nod to Mark Addy as the pompous Uncle Pumblechook. I don't usually warm to David Suchet, as I find it impossible to disassociate him in my mind (unfortunately) with Hercule Poirot, where he just comes over as smarmy, but here he inhabits the bones of the lawyer Jaggers, who knows everything, but refuses to reveal or clarify, until even he at the end exhibits the human frailty at his core. Gillian Anderson gave a completely different reading to the irresponsible Miss Havisham, playing fey and eerily girlish rather than the more usual jilted Maggie Thatcher lever-puller interpretation, and all the more intriguing for that.

Estella and Pip were played well (especially Vanessa Kirby's Estella) as pawns rather than wholly finished characters with self-determination and a balanced view. Another reviewer complained that Pip, on receiving his inheritance, went to London and became a wastrel and a fop. Er...that's rather one of the points of the book, isn't it, before he redeems himself by coming to care for Magwitch (and cared for in turn by Joe - oddly missed out of this version) and manages to become, along with Estella, a more rounded and compassionate human being.

Too short, of course, could have done with another episode or three, but full marks all the same.