Great Expectations (2011): The Miniseries

 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

While my experience with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is only through the various adaptations, I think I am safe in saying that this is one of his bleaker novels. Even by those standards however, I was surprised at how bleak and despairing the 2011 BBC adaption was. While in some ways sumptuous, in other ways dull, Great Expectations has some good performances but one awful one in the midst of it that brings the project down.

Young Philip Pirrip better known as Pip is forced to help escaped convict Abel Magwitch (Ray Winstone). Magwitch may be a criminal, but he curiously is nicer than either Pip's sister or Orlick (Jack Roth), the apprentice blacksmith to his uncle Joe (Shaun Dooley), the only kind person in Pip's life. Pip's life however takes a few strange turns.

First is when he is called to serve at Satis House, home of the wealthy recluse Miss Havisham (Gillian Anderson). Havisham is haunted by her jilting at the altar to where she still wears her wedding dress and keeps the rotting wedding feast intact. Pip is made the playmate of Estella, Havisham's adopted daughter, but this is part of Havisham's crazed revenge plot.

A second turn is when seven years later, the adult Pip (Douglas Booth), now apprentice to Joe, is made heir to a great fortune by a mysterious benefactor who wishes him to "live as a young fellow of great expectations". Now off to London to live the lush life, he becomes friends with Herbert Pocket (Harry Lloyd), Havisham's nephew whom as a child he once punched. Their purse strings are controlled by Jaggers (David Suchet), an efficient lawyer who deals with young men of privilege. 

Pip pursues Estella (Vanessa Kirby) now that he is a gentleman, but she has been trained to be cold towards men. Her coldness is perfect for wealthy Bentley Drummle (Tom Burke), who cares nothing for her but only for her future fortune. Once Pip discovers whom his secret benefactor is, things go full speed as he tries to sort out his own life while attempting to help Herbert and his secret benefactor. As much as both Havisham and others attempt to thwart out pair, circumstances bring Pip and Estella together over all their obstacles.

In some respects, this Great Expectations has a wealth of great acting. At the top of the list is Suchet as Jaggers. Cold but efficient, blunt but aware, his Jaggers is frightening in how he makes sense even as he appears coldhearted. He does not tolerate fools and executes his clients wishes with efficiency, and Suchet dominates everyone who shares the screen with him.

Anderson, the only American in the cast, takes a different tact with her Miss Havisham. She has a singsong style to her delivery, childlike that makes her version more sympathetic. Anderson still makes Miss Havisham into a totally creepy figure, but we see the haunted woman behind the cray-cray. Her Miss Havisham does not appear to be the bitter jilted spinster of lore. Instead, she appears more haunted and lost, a broken woman suspended in a living death. Her first appearance makes her look like a literal ghost, giving her a haunted quality. It is as if she were a walking corpse.

She is also more manipulative, fixated on bringing misery to others as vengeance for having misery visited upon her long before Estella or Pip were born. It is an exceptionally strong performance that is to be commended.

Another standout is Harry Lloyd's Herbert Pocket. He is somewhat diminished in this adaptation, but Lloyd makes Pocket into a good man, reformed from his youthful arrogance into someone who is motivated to do good and love well. Cheerful but serious when needed, one wishes for a Herbert Pocket spinoff where we see him and his wife in Cairo.

What sinks Great Expectations a great deal is the central character. It is not Douglas Booth's fault that he is exceptionally pretty. It is his fault that he cannot act, at least not in Great Expectations. One already finds it laughable that such a delicate looking, almost porcelain like figure such as Booth would plausibly be an apprentice blacksmith. He in actuality looks like he's never done a single day's worth of manual labor in his life, let alone something as labor intensive as a blacksmith. 

Booth's delicate features and elegant manners are already difficult to overlook to be seen as a working-class hero. It is his total blankness as Pip that dooms him and Great Expectations. No matter what the situation, Booth gives the same disengaged expression. He is like many people who have film/television careers based more on their looks than their acting prowess. His lack of reaction when his benefactor reveals himself should elicit howls of laughter. It does not matter whether he is trying to con an old hand like Jaggers, express ardor to Estella or feverishly work to save Herbert. Booth gives the audience the same facial expression throughout Great Expectations.

I once commented that Jaime Dornan's performance in Wild Mountain Thyme was more that of a good- looking man who can speak than of someone who could actually act. As a side note, I still feel this way about Dornan regardless of the praise he's gotten for Belfast. When it comes to Booth's performance in Great Expectations, I'm not sure he could even get past the speaking part. It is just so blank and empty. Worse, it makes Pip look less naive and more eternally stupid.

Perhaps Booth's weakness as an actor is why Kirby seemed to match him in the blankness of her own performance. While not as bad as Booth, Kirby looked neither like the cold woman or the simmering woman underneath. 

Great Expectations also, I think, went overboard in its Gothic trappings. The miniseries is dominated by endless shades of grey to where you wonder if sunlight even exists. It is as if the production wanted to encase you permanently in Satis House. Such dour looks and heavy greys work when we venture into Miss Havisham's ruined home, but why do so when entering the magic world of cosmopolitan London? 

Despite having more time to develop the Dickens story than other versions, this Great Expectations seems almost rushed. The heaviness of the production and Douglas Booth's lack of performance pushes the project down. It has the saving grace of strong performances from others (Suchet and Anderson in particular) but I found it a terrible disappointment. My expectations were not met.

5/10 

Great Expectations (2013): A Review (Review #885)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

My curiosity with Great Expectations began when posters for the 2013 version began showing up at my local theater in El Paso, Texas.  I was intrigued by what looked like an elaborate, sumptuous feature.  Yet, despite mass promotion, Great Expectations never actually played here.  I was puzzled by that, and as I waited, I began my exploration of this story.  Now, we've come full circle. 

After the original, Oscar-winning adaptation of Great Expectations, and the 'updated' version that set our oft-told tale of a young man's total education to current times, we go back to the source for our third adaptation of the Dickens masterwork.  Great Expectations is steady, respectable, beautifully filmed.  Why then is it yet another bungled adaptation?

This version sticks very close to the original novel (or at least the parts I remember, seeing as I have never been able to get through it despite three times trying).  Pip (Toby Irvine as a child, his older brother Jeremy as the adult) is caught by an escaped convict who terrifies the child into bringing him food and a file from his uncle, the local blacksmith.  Said criminal is caught and sent up the river, but he doesn't forget Pip's kindness.

A few years later, Pip is summoned to Satis House, the home of recluse Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham Carter).  She has locked herself away since she was jilted on her wedding day, still wearing her wedding gown and leaving everything untouched since that fateful day, her wedding feast rotting away.  She has Pip be a playmate to her adopted daughter, the beautiful but haughty and cold-hearted Estella.

Some time later, after Pip decides he would be happier as apprentice to his kindly but dimwitted Uncle Joe (Jason Flemyng), the lawyer Mr. Jaggers (Robbie Coltrane) arrives to tell Pip that he has a strange inheritance from a mysterious benefactor.  It's off to London for young Pip, who indulges in being a gentleman and all that entails: membership in a club for spoiled men, racking up debts, dressing well, and sharing rooms with Herbert Pocket (Olly Alexander), whom he met years before at Satis House and with whom he becomes friends with.

Over the rest of Great Expectations, Pip's story is intertwined with others, particularly Estella (Holliday Grainger), who has grown beautiful but cold.  She toys with him, rebuffing him and yet dangling him.  Pip learns that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham, as he believes, but that same criminal from long ago, Abel Magwitch (Ralph Fiennes).  Despite the dangers of his returning to England, where he will be returned to prison, he wants to see if his unofficial wards 'great expectations' were met.

In those coincidences that Dickens so loves, in short order we find that Magwitch was part of the conspiracy to defraud Miss Havisham (and which involved leaving her at the altar), that Estella was the daughter Magwitch thought dead and whose adoption was arranged by Jaggers, that Estella's mother was Jaggers' maid, and that the man whom Magwitch wants to kill was the same one who destroyed both his and Havisham's lives.

Eventually, Pip finds that life at the top isn't what it's cracked up to be, and Joe, kindly as ever, has paid off all his debts.  With what little he has, Pip gives it to Herbert in secret, who then employs him as a clerk.  At the end, Pip and Estella reunite after she becomes a widow, sad at how her life is.  Poor Miss Havisham died years earlier when she accidentally set herself on fire after realizing what she'd done to Pip.  Whether Pip and Estella can truly be together, we know not...

As I said, this version of  Great Expectations is a straightforward version, sticking very close, if not slavishly close, to the original text.  That, I think, is the main problem.  David Nicholls' adaptation is very proper, but very dry.  The characters, for all their eccentricity, their tragedy, their education, never come across as actual people.  It is all very dry, very proper, but like Estella herself, very remote.

It's almost as if director Mike Newell and screenwriter Nicholls decided that Great Expectations should combined the ossified world of Miss Havisham with the coldness and aloof nature of Estella.  As such, the film suffers from a variety of ailments.  It is very slow, it is very mannered, and in some cases, it is very forced.

There are three good performances in this version.  Fiennes is better than the material as Magwitch, his strange nature hiding a great tragedy, the mixture of revenge and desire to do good being interesting to watch.  The best performance is that of Coltrane, whose shifty lawyer is the master puppeteer, forever pulling strings and knowing more than he lets on.  Not far behind is Alexander's Herbert, who is the only one who has any sense of joy and doesn't behave on screen if THIS IS ALL SERIOUS.

Curiously, I thought Bonham Carter would have been better as Miss Havisham, one of the most legendary of characters.  I found her a bit mannered and theatrical as this sad, bitter recluse, forever tortured by her heartbreak. 

It's the leads that are leaden and dull.  Granted, Jeremy Irvine is particularly beautiful to look at, as is Grainger, but Irvine is never able to bring any emotion to Pip, and it was curious that when Pip is supposed to show snobbery towards Joe's more country manners, he looked as if he were trying too hard to make him snobbish.  It was very forced, and Grainger was very mannered in her performance (showing she really was adopted by Bonham Carter).

It's one thing to portray a woman with a cold heart.  It's another to show virtually no emotion.

I can't complain about the sets and costumes and cinematography, all beautiful and elegant and posh.  I also give credit to Nicholls in making the various twists of Dickens (which I have found a bit too convenient whenever I think of the novel) more plausible and making things a bit more clear for me.  That is good.

There's nothing horrible in it, but there's nothing in it that makes it anything more than a good companion piece to the end of a reading assignment to Dickens' novel. I think on the whole though, this version of Great Expectations is a bit empty and hollow, nice looking but mummified...like Miss Havisham's wedding feast. 

DECISION: C-

Great Expectations (1998): A Review

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Estella Dullus...

There was a time, not too long ago, when 'classic' novels/plays were getting the 'Update Treatment'.  The general thought was that teens, generally either too bored or too stupid to bother reading these hallmarks of English/American literature (let alone understand them), needed to have these stories placed in contemporary settings and brought from the dusty and rarified air into bright, shining versions.  These versions were hip and cool and most importantly, flashy.

They had to be flashy because as we all know, reading or hearing Shakespeare's or Charles Dickens' words is simply too difficult for today's audiences.  The MTV Generation demanded things be brought down to their level, because they sure weren't going to raise their standards for some books by a bunch of dead people.

On occasion, these updates can breath new life into these classics and even be entertaining (Clueless for example was a funny and clever update of Jane Austen's Emma).  They can be quite pleasant (the updating of The Taming of the Shrew into 10 Things I Hate About You was a delight).  Then, there are other cases. 

The contemporary version of Dickens' Great Expectations is not the nadir of this 'literature for the youth market' craze.  I still think Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet is a horror and an abomination of my beloved Shakespeare (though I concede many teens STILL are enthralled with it, though I've no idea why).  However, this Great Expectations suffers from many flaws to make it interesting, let alone worthy of being in the same category as the 1947 version.

Finnegan "Finn" Bell (Ethan Hawke) is going to tell us this story, in his own words, "not the way it happened, but the way I remember it".  Thanks for the 'unreliable narrator' update. He is a young man in Florida, living with his sister Maggie (Kim Dickens) and her husband, Joe (Chris Cooper).  One day, he finds an escaped convict who holds him and threatens him and his family, demanding food in exchange for Finn's life.  Finn complies, and later the convict tries to run off to Mexico with Finn as some kind of hostage.  The convict is caught and returned to prison.

Shortly after, Joe and Finn are called to the home of reclusive Miss Nora Driggers Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft), a Miss Havisham-type who is more Norma Desmond living at "Paraiso Perduto" (that's Paradise Lost in case the symbolism isn't already testing your patience).  Miss Dinsmoor has a beautiful niece, Estella, who catches Finn's eye.  In turn, Estella plays hot and cold with our hero, and even draws the taunts of Miss Dinsmoor, who tells him he will fall in love with Estella...only to have his heart broken.

Finn has fallen in love, but his hopes are dashed when Estella leaves, and now seven years have passed.  Finn has gone to New York to pursue his art dreams, when a lawyer comes to offer patronage on behalf of a mysterious figure.  To Finn's surprise, another figure comes his way: Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow).  She continues her game of teasing Finn, taking him to the edge and pulling back, even doing this in front of her fiancée Walter (Hank Azaria) and her posh friends.  Eventually, Finn tires of this and gets on with his life.

With continued patronage, Finn becomes a success, but his personal life continues to be a mess.  Joe shows up for Finn's debut, embarrassing him with his rustic manners.  The mysterious benefactor reappears: it's that same criminal, Lustig (Robert De Niro), who takes Finn on a wild run from thugs in the New York City subway.  Even Miss Dinsmoor pops up earlier, taunting him with how Estella has gone off to Paris to marry Walter.

And I think all this was that same night.

Eventually, after Lustig's death Finn becomes an artist without his patron, and he makes a sentimental return to Paraiso Perduto.  He finds a young girl and imagines it's Estella, but it's really Estella's daughter.  Now divorced from Walter, she begs forgiveness for her past actions, and she and Finn reconcile, with a chance that perhaps they can be together at last.

It is a bit sad that Great Expectations came to us courtesy of Alfonso Cuaron, who has gone on to bigger and better things.  Great Expectations suffers from a whole series of bad performances by people who really should know better, so while we can fault some of the actors for being bad, they had to have been guided by someone who couldn't get them to do better when they obviously can (four Oscar winners and one two-time acting nominee). 

Worse among the performances are the elders in our group.  I won't go so far as to say that Bancroft was doing some form of drag queen impersonation, but Miss Dinsmoor was so broad and unintentionally comical that she came across not as menacing or bitter or even crazy but as a joke that she wasn't in on.  Cuaron's decision to have her always wear green as opposed to her wedding dress made her look like Poison Ivy's slightly bonkers grandmother.

As a side note, I wonder why the film opted out of both naming her Miss Havisham (too British, I imagine) and having her not wear her wedding dress (I imagine the Gen Xers the film was appealing too would have found that too ludicrous).

Ultimately though, Bancroft was just a dead man in a pool away from telling Mr. DeMille she was ready for her close-up.

Great Expectations also allowed De Niro to go into his worst traits.  His Lustig was pretty much bonkers too, more raging lunatic than a sober-minded man who was rewarding a kindness.

As both played by Paltrow and written by Mitch Glazer, Estella isn't an obscure object of desire but as a morose, bored person with no personality.  It's a wonder as to why Finn or even Walter (weak as he was) would care for or about Estella.  She never made Estella an interesting person, let alone a fascinating and/or erotic one.  Whether it's due to Glazer's script or Paltrow's stilted performance or both is up to the viewer.

Hawke wasn't breaking new ground as an actor here, playing a variation of the confused young man he had done before.  Maybe it's because he was at that period of his life where his role as the symbol of Gen X male confusion was what sold him, but while I won't say he was horrible I won't say he was good either.

Azaria does fine as the plain Walter Plane (which makes me wonder if Glazer was going for overtness by naming our dull character "Plane".  I figure he must have, otherwise it was a remarkable coincidence).  I mean 'does fine' if Walter was meant to be dull, so if that was the case Azaria did a fine job.

I imagine the reason I didn't totally hate Great Expectations has to do with the fact that it is a beautiful looking film.  The sets are quite exotic (even the dilapidated Paraiso Perduto), and Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography still top-notch.  Truth be told, I wasn't crazy over Patrick Doyle's score (and he is one of my favorites) but I don't remember hating it, so there's that.

Great Expectations is all pretty, the type of film where I can imagine the MC from Cabaret saying that 'even the orchestra is beautiful'.  Beauty, however, goes only so far, and Great Expectations does not live up to them.        

DECISION: D+

Great Expectations (1946): A Review (Review #590)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1946)

Life Is Not A Pip For Pip...

I tried to read Great Expectations, but truth be told I found it exceptionally boring (and this from someone who loves Charles Dickens).  My friend Fidel Gomez, Jr. (who may or may not be dead) suggested I read Great Expectations a chapter a day rather than reading continuously, since it reads better as a series of adventures rather than a straight book. 

Perhaps.

I do know enough of the plot to plunge into the first adaptation of Great Expectations.  David Lean created a brilliant adaptation, mixing the moody visuals with a story that keeps one interested (albeit moving a bit slowly for my tastes).

In voice-over, Pip (John Mills) narrates our tale.  He starts out as a young orphan, taken in by his unpleasant sister named "Mrs. Joe" (Freda Jackson) and her kindly blacksmith husband (Bernard Miles).  While going to visit his parent's graves, Pip is accosted by an escaped criminal, demanding food and drink and threatening to have his fellow escapee kill Pip and his family.  A terrified Pip does as he's told, going so far as to steal the bullying Mrs. Joe's pork pie.  Before he is discovered though, the criminals are caught, and the one that bullied him, Magwitch (Finlay Currie) takes the fall for the pie.

Some time later, the wealthy but reclusive Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) requests Pip come visit her and her ward, Estella (Jean Simmons).  Miss Havisham is a truly bizarre figure: jilted on her wedding day, she continues to wear the bridal gown she had on before news of her runaway groom came to her, the wedding feast still laid out, with only the rats to delight in the mummified cake.  She wants a playmate for Estella, but in really she is training her to take revenge on all men by having them fall in love with her only for Estella to later reject them.  Pip does indeed fall in love with Estella, though she is terribly cold with him. 

More time passes in this odd game, and Pip discovers that he has a mysterious benefactor, one who wishes 'great expectations' for him.  He now abandons his apprenticeship with Joe and goes to London to become a gentleman, where the benefactor's lawyer Mr. Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) and his selected roommate Herbert Pocket (Alec Guinness) will handle his finances and show him how to be a gentleman. 

As is the case in life, mo' money mo' problems.  Estella (Valerie Hobson) has indeed grown beautiful and cold, turning from Pip to the dull Bentley Drummle (Torin Thatcher) whom she cares nothing for.  All this time Pip suspects that the mysterious benefactor is Miss Havisham, but we find that it is Magwitch himself, grateful for Pip's kindness and never having forgotten it.  Magwitch has made a fortune in Australia, but returning to Britain puts him in danger of getting locked up again.

Jaggers, ever loyal to the employer his shrewd legal mind won't recognize, tells Pip, "Take nothing on its looks; everything on evidence.  There is not better rule."  Why did he think Miss Havisham was his benefactress?  Why was Estella so cold?  What of Estella's parentage...how is Magwitch related to that question? 

Pip, having met his 'great expectations' and found them lacking, confronts the cold Miss Havisham and colder Estella.  Havisham, having seen the extent that her vengeance has wrecked so many lives, attempts to call Pip back, but her gown catches fire and she is killed.  The truth comes out at last: Magwitch is caught attempting to escape with Pip and Pocket's help but is killed in the process, and when Drummle discovers Estella's true past he abandons her.  Estella appears to be repeating the mistakes of her patroness, but Pip forces the window curtains open, and now perhaps Pip and Estella can enter the world with hope.

Great Expectation has all those Dickensian coincidences that I have come to see are Chuck's modus operandi.  What ARE the odds that Magwitch (the criminal Pip meets) would be Estella's father (who was taken in by Miss Havisham, who knows of Pip)?  What ARE the odds that Mr. Jaggers would be the lawyer to BOTH Miss Havisham AND Magwitch (thus giving the impression of who was helping Pip)? In Charles Dickens' novels I find that coincidence plays a major role: the relationship between the  Evremondes and the Mannettes in A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist being the long-lost nephew of the family that rescued him.  Great Expectations does not stray from these aspects (though again, never having gotten through the novel I cannot say how close it is to the original). 

However, Lean creates this creepy, moody world where Pip finds himself going from the gentleness and sincerity of Joe's lower-class to the rarified world of wealth only to find that money cannot bring happiness.  Think of those characters that have money: Miss Havisham and her greedy relatives waiting for her to die, Magwitch running from the law.  They are not happy at all, and Pip learns that those 'great expectations' are fraught with falsehoods.

Among Great Expectations brilliant moments come from the visuals.  The spooky moor and graveyard, the decayed opulence of Havisham's heartless mansion, the genteel squalor of Pip and Pocket's digs: they themselves tell us as much of the story and characters as the spoken dialogue.  If anything, Great Expectations is a beautiful film visually.

In terms of performances there is some extraordinary acting in the film.  Hunt's Miss Havisham is a cold, cruel being who by the end finds that she has been wrong.  While we don't actually see her burn (and she certainly deserves to burn) we do feel empathy for her.  Simmons, only a child at the time, is brilliant as the cold and heartless Estella.  In a smaller role, Jackson's Mrs. Joe inspires total hatred for how mean and bullying she is.

However, we can't leave out Mills' Pip, who goes from a gentleman to a man, as well as Guinness' light turn as the comic Pocket, eager to help in any way he can.

If I were to find any faults in Great Expectations, is that it feels terribly long (and this is after Lean, along with Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan, as well as Kay Walsh and Cecil McGivern, streamlined the novel).   It just felt as if the film is so long that it starts to drag.  However, this is a minor complaint. 

Great Expectations is a strong adaptation of a book I found a bit dull.  Minus the sometimes slow movement I found it to be well-made, well-acted, and well worth the time, particularly if you love the book. 

DECISION: A-