Leah Day

(2012-04-27 03:31:09)

My expectations were met.

What can I say, this version of Dickens classic is beautiful. The castingissuperb the script is nice and rich, the costumes were to die for. I canseewhy Justine Waddell favoured hers so much.What really caught my eye was the girl who played the younger version ofEstella. What a great actress she is!I really cannot say a bad thing about this film.:) Leah.

Arnie Mellor

(2012-04-26 10:07:47)

Breathtaking

This would have to be the best three hours of viewing Ihaveseen in years.The acting,locations and costumes were spoton.Mr.Dickens was probably turning in his grave at some ofthe'adjustments'made to his original story.but I don't thinkthisspoiled the viewing in any way.You have to give the Englishcredit,they surely know how to make historical type movies.

Kimberley

(2012-04-20 07:27:58)

Captivating and beautiful

I've seen some three or four adaptations of this classic novel, and Ihonestly think that this is one of the best out there. The settings areappropriately dark and in keeping with Dickens' bleak writing, a shiningexample being Miss Havisham's mansion. The acting is perfectly superb; IoanGruffudd is most definitely one of the best finds of the past few years. IanMcDiaramid is wonderful as usual, and Gruffudd's Titanic castmate BernardHill (that movie's Captain EJ Smith) is a great Magwitch. Keep your eye onIoan, I predict great things! His performance is outstanding, down to thereplacing of his own Welsh accent with Pip's distinctive lower-class Englishone. Lovely filming, great direction and wonderful acting make this a greataddition to the already distinguished collection of theBBC.

bigfatl

(2012-04-19 13:18:45)

Stunning

Whilst it has not stuck to the text word for word, it has not veeredgreatly from it. The film covers everything that needs to be covered onthe whole, and where it has altered things, I think it has done so forthe better. The film still paints and amazing picture of this excellentpiece of literary work!The casting was simply spectacular, the idea of sexing up Miss Haveshamwith the delectable Charlotte Rampling was perhaps the most unique andwelcomed aspect of this production, which does anything but suffer fromit. Waddell, Hill, Gruffudd, and Evans all give stellar performancesand carry the film. The score is extremely haunting and so spectacularthat I went out and bought the CD (which we were very lucky the BBCreleased). How Peter Salem has not been snapped up by Hollywood yet Idon't know!The score on top of the direction and production design make this amouth watering feature that I'd recommend to anyone! The film got methrough A-Level English.

eric walter

(2012-04-09 03:48:09)

Visually Stunning!

Director Julian Jarrold does a truly excellent job of bringing CharlesDickens' finest novel to the screen. Filled with haunting camera angles, amagnificent score by Peter Salem, and superb acting by Welsh actor IoanGruffudd and Justine Waddall, this version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS isdefintlyworth multiple viewings!!

pawebster

(2012-04-08 19:02:44)

Subtly changed version

This is quite a good version, but be prepared for some oddities. Themain one that Pip is made less nice than usual. His friendship with Joeis made to seem particularly one-sided, and he is extra reluctant tohelp Magwitch on the latter's return. Both young and older Pip are wellplayed -- Gabriel Thomson deserves particular praise -- but we neverfeel that we really know the character. This is perhaps the main defectof this version. The voice-over in the old David Lean version washelpful there.I personally don't like Charlotte Rampling as Miss Havisham. The roleshould not have been glamourised. Dickens does not do glamour. Estellais good however. Compare this performance with the oversweet Estella ofthe David Lean film.By the way, this version has an excellent Herbert Pocket. Thegoody-goody characters in Dickens are not easy to play without sugarysentimentality, but Daniel Evans' Herbert really lives.

Spleen

(2012-04-01 03:31:21)

Poor Execution

`Great Expectations' is the best of Charles Dickens's novels. Maybe it'sthe best novel that there is. It's certainly a novel where every incidentis important - so there is no excuse for a TV version being a miserablethree hours long. If they HAD to truncate it, though, then there's no helpfor it: some valuable scenes must be removed. What they've done instead is to sort of leave everything in, but skate overit all at high speed. It's as if they've simply left out every othersentence. The opening encounter with Magwitch in the churchyard is conveyedwithout being shown at all. We get a few seconds of terror, then a cut tolater that evening, and then we're shown a bit more of the crucial scene inflashback - only just enough to understand what is going on, if that. (Don't even get me STARTED on the ludicrous editing, or the self-consciouslyarty camera angles.) Some scenes have been re-written. The result isusually awful.Is this just the complaint of someone who has read the book, and finds thefilmed version to be different? No: rather the reverse. If you haven'tread the book you'll have a much harder time than I did even making sense ofthings; and you won't, as I did, have any particular reason to care aboutthe characters.For instance: the central character is Pip. Anyone who has read the bookknows how close Dickens brings us to him. Not once in this version are we,so to speak, introduced to Pip. No scene lasts long enough - he does notconfide in any other character long enough - for us to get a sense of hismotivations or a reason to continue to sympathise with him after he doessomething shameful. What's more, the mature Pip is an utter disaster. There-writing of key encounters with Miss Havisham, Orlick, and Estella (that'sright - all three) makes Pip out to be more thoughtless, more cowardly, morevindictive and less intelligent than Dickens makes him out to be. (Notethat Dickens doesn't make him out to be vindictive at all.) If we care whathappens to him at all it's only because we have even less reason to carewhat happens to anyone else.I've only scratched the surface - it's bad all the way through. I will,though, allow that many of the actors give excellent performances undertrying circumstances. (I can't warm at all to Ioan Gruffudd as the maturePip, but that was probably the script.) That's about it. I can't evenrecommend this as the best TV version going, since the Disney series of 1989(a decent five hours long) is all that one could wish for. With thatversion in existence this one was just a waste of everyone's time. Don'tmake it a waste of yours.

Kate-71

(2012-03-31 10:33:28)

Stunning

This absorbing adaptation is a pleasure to watch. Inevitably some of thenuances of the novel, such as the turning of Pip from his roots, are madeabrupt in this three hour adaptation. The acting is superb and not overlymannered. Ian McDiarmid makes a complex Jaggers, and Charlotte Ramplingisravishing and vulnerable as Miss Havisham. There are fine performances fromfamiliar actors as Joe and as Abel as well. Ioan Gruffudd is a stunningPip. An ideal romantic hero, as we have already seen in the Hornblowerseries, he is physically stunning and manages to act as well. (For myliking a bit more smoldering wouldn't go amiss.) I enjoyed his reading ofLatin to Abel with a Welsh accent!

T Y

(2012-03-31 02:06:29)

Too tasteful for its own good

This is better than the Michael York 'Great Expectations' which is notworth your time. But some addled producer must have gotten it in hishead that Dickens deserved the weightiness of Shakespeare. It doesn't.Almost all Dickens is low, rollicking and shambling, with fuzzy edges.His books don't have these overly tasteful aspirations. Here, a verygood Dickens novel is given a straight, costume-drama, MasterpieceTheater production. And it attempts some regional verisimilitude thatdoesn't end up adding much. It seems designed to appeal to femaleviewers. Dickens characters are recluses, unbalanced eccentrics andweirdos, but here they've all been leveled out. Characters, settings,emotions, none of it ends up being as vivid as the David Lean versionwhich has been more lovingly shaped. Every emotion in this isoh-so-serious with characters brooding over things that can't bespoken. It's like they all worked too hard on figuring out the "innertruth" and "motivation" of their characters. PFFFFT! To what end? Itkills the story. They're so uptight they might as well be Swedish.The story is better and more thoughtful when it's ambiguous and withouta villain (See Lean). Miss Havisham is a bit of absurdity who should betreated almost as a caricature, though she certainly delivers somebombshells. It doesn't suit the story for her be played realisticallylike here. Orlick shows up in this version, but his value was neververy important to the Pip narrative, except to include Dicken's usualvillain. This Jaggers just cannot compare with Francis Sullivan'shaughty power-brokering from '46. But the fatal blow is Ioan Gruffudd.At no point can a viewer decipher what his impenetrable, stone-facedPip feels about anything. It's impossible to see him as anything otherthan a prop that is acted upon. The pacing is beyond lugubrious. Not anounce of humor remains.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

(2012-03-30 10:26:07)

No happy ending to be expected

One of the cruelest stories I know. Dickens is so cruel we cannotimagine he is a man, what's more a humane human being.A poor orphan, Pip, is raised by a poor blacksmith. A life of rough andtough luck. Take it or leave it, but there is no way out, except theradical one. And he dreams of being a gentleman one day. An aberrationof course, morally wrong and bad taste.He is selected and invited by Miss Havisham, a deranged rich woman whois mourning in total decay and sorrow after the failure of her weddingwhen the bridegroom did not come, twenty years before. Her objective isto provide a male companion and eventually husband to her adopteddaughter, Estella.But one night on the moor Pip is "accosted" by an prison escapee ofsome kind who asks for food and the boy of six or seven, maybe eightprovides in the night, including a file for him to get rid of hismanacles. He will turn up as his benefactor.Luck, luck and luck. But then systematically Dickens shatters everysingle opportunity and hope on the side of the boy, Pip, who ends up inprison for unpaid debts, on the side of his benefactor, Abel, who willdie in prison holding Pip's hand after his final arrest, on the side ofMiss Havisham who will achieve none of her plans, on the side ofEstella who will marry the rich and noble young man, will be brutalizedand will end up alone in Miss Havisham's house, on the side of Biddywho will marry Joe the Blacksmith when Pip finally realizes she hadbeen his closest ever friend, and even on the side of Estella who willrefuse to requite Pip's love, though she will accept to make him herplatonic companion in Miss Havisham's.redecorated house.That cruelty is so extreme that we just wonder if Dickens then is notgoing through a phase of complete social rejection, rejection of theupper classes, rejection of the lower classes, rejection of justice,rejection of any discourse about the possible improvement ofindividuals and society. Absolute resignation and pessimisticsubmission to a totally inhumane world that only has some small pocketsof satisfaction, but never for yourself, always for some rare others.He did not even salvage the exiled criminal who became Pip'sbenefactor, as Victor Hugo did in Les MisГѓВ©rables, and makes him die asolitary, nearly solitary death in prison with the sole company of theyoung man he tried and failed to help, and unaware of his daughter'sfate, which does not seem to be particularly brilliant anyway, sinceshe is Estella, daughter of a female assassin and a male exiledcriminal condemned to absolute reclusion for life.I just wonder if here Dickens does not reach Zola's pessimism whoconsidered that anyone born in a criminal circle could only be that anddrag everyone around him down into that criminal circle. No salvationfor those who are badly born. The belief in an elected people turnedinto a savage and wild social Darwinism: some have been elected to becrushed and powdered by life as slowly as possible for them to regretever being born but absolutely unable to shorten the ordeal.Sad and sad and sad.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU