Film Review: Great Expectations

Of course a big production like this is going to be compared to the genre-defining ‘Great Expectations’ film of David Lean over six decades ago. That was a boxy, black and white masterpiece and this is a colourful, sweeping landscapes production. Visit Englandproudly put on a preview screening with the film’s co-producer Elizabeth Karlsen at the  Courthouse Hotel cinema – where Charles Dickens was a court reporter back in the day.

Here’s what we thought of the film and then some info on the locations:

Synopsis: Young orphan Pip is given a chance to rise from his humble beginnings thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Moving through London’s class ridden world as a gentleman, Pip uses his new-found position to pursue the beautiful Estella; a spoilt heiress he’s loved since childhood. Yet the shocking truth behind his great fortune will have devastating consequences for everything he holds dear.

By rights it’s a gritty coming-of-age story that deals with social mobility, snobbery and aspiration, wealth and poverty, love and rejection – it does all that. A very faithful retelling of the story, not narrated by Pip but still true to Dickens’ dialogue, apart from a few missteps on the fate of Mrs. Joe and a dubious ending – but even Dickens, himself, changed that.

It’s a date movie, for Anglophiles and lovers of great stories well told – swoon over Jeremy Irvine’s Pip, the flawed, dashing romantic hero and Holliday Grainger playing Estella, the ‘ice for a heart’ bejewelled upwardly mobile heroine. Marvel at the marshes, desolate Kentish landscapes,  recoil at un-sewered, chimney-smoke spewing London. We quite fancy ourselves in the beautifully tailored velvet frock coats and huge silky bows – and that’s just for the men! 

Robbie Coltrane stands out as trusted attorney Mr Jaggers, and steals the show – curiously he’s never done Dickens before. Jeremy’s brother, Toby plays the young Pip, an Oliver Twist in the making. Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch is muddied, bloodied and bad. A luminous Biddy (Jessica Cave) and faithful friend Herbert Pocket (Olly Alexander) are great and warm parts. In life we often forget the good guys but here Pip’s brother-in-law Joe Gargery is nicely played by Jason Flemyng especially when he comes up to town and doesn’t fit in.There’s a bit of a groan when David Walliams as Uncle Pumblechook pops up early on, and I think it’s going to be the ‘usual suspects’ of British luvvies – but the casting is clever and gives new talent a chance to shine.

Helena Bonham Carter in Great Expectations

Although Dickens wrote that Miss Havisham was in her mid fifties, Helena Bonham Carter is, I think, still too young and striking to play her. The filmmakers admit they wanted to move away from the notion that Miss Havisham is an old crone, “which she isn’t in the book,” says writer David Nicholls (One Day, Starter for Ten). “She is not particularly aged. She is a lonely, tortured, anguished woman, troubled, and we wanted to get away from the idea of her being witchy and malicious and unchanging.”

For me, she seems to have taken the role away from the human, broken, jilted woman and Helena admits she became “a real swot” when researching her role, speaking to several psychiatrists and experts on osteoporosis.  “Miss Havisham has been inside for 15 years, so she would have had no vitamin D in her body,” she notes, “and she’d have had a failing eyesight. She is always asking Pip to come closer.

But it’s not brittle bones and monocles we want. Give us illumination of character not clever ticks. This lack of sunshine helps keep the deep wrinkles away but her portrayal is too muted and pale so that we can’t feel her eaten-away heart.

Talking of which, the scenes of Pip arriving in London will make many a vegetarian wince.

Elizabeth Karlsen

Producer Elizabeth Karlsen (The Crying Game, Made in Dagenham, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) said she thought it was the first opportunity to shoot the story again with new technology,  photographing England beautifully – ‘something that hadn’t been seen before’. She talks of loving English country houses such as her neighbour Dyrham Park, the Grade II-listed National Trust mansion where The Remains of the Day was filmed and the bleak countryside of Allenheads in Northumberland. She said the location hunt with Location Manager Dan Whitty  was about ‘seeing places you don’t normally see’ – such as the shell beach at the Isle of Sheppey. As the beach shoots were at the end of September, Elizabeth lay awake at night worried about what the weather would be like, would it be rain, but it turned out to be the two hottest days of the year. The sun popped and lit up the gazillions of white shells on the beach. The plan was to shoot the changing seasons in the film and she was mesmerised by the Kent marshes with its open, flat landscape. The camera hovers, rises and swoops to captures the landscape beautifully. 

Elizabeth says it’s a real treat to make movies and she and Director Mike Newell  are both very proud of it. So they should be, it will play and sell well globally but it doesn’t quite live up to my great expectations.

@alangreenhalgh

The Locations

The vast and imposing Englefield House in Berkshire, whose gardens are open to the public between April-October, is Miss Havisham’s Satis House. Imposing climbing vines  and tall, impenetrable gates give the house its melancholy and shuttered air.

Englefield House by John Constable for Great Expectations

Chatham Historical Dockyard in Kent, open to the public from March – December, is the fictional Liverpool Docks where Herbert’s business is located.

Wrotham Park, a grade II-listed Palladian mansion in Barnet, is used to film Estella dancing in the ballroom scene. The emotionally charged scene which follows, between Pip and Estella, is filmed on the balcony and by the cedar tree in front of the estate.

Also featured in the film is Swakeleys House in Uxbridge. The grade I-listed 17^th-century mansion is used to film Pip’s splendid Mayfair apartment.

Both Wrotham Park and Swakeleys House are open to the public once a year during London Open House.

Release date: 30 November 2012
Running time: 129 mins
Certificate: 12A

Some more reviews of Great Expectations here:

www.totalfilm.com

www.guardian.co.uk 

www.independent.co.uk