Great Expectations (2011)

Here is another adaptation I watched over the holiday period. Great Expectations was the BBC’s offering over the Christmas holiday, adapted by Sarah Phelps and shown in three parts. If you have read this blog regularly you will know I love a good BBC adaptation. This one has an all-star cast, including Ray Winstone, David Suchet, Shaun Dooley, Gillian Anderson, and Mark Addy with the relatively new faces of Douglas Booth and Vanessa Kirby. Interestingly I’ve heard rumours of a hollywood adaptation of Great Expectations will be released this year, which will star Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter. Look forward to doing a little comparison.

Young Philip Pirrup simply known as Pip is a poor orphan who has grown up with his snobbish sister and her blacksmith husband Joe. Pip and Joe have a close relationship and it has always been agreed that Pip will do an apprenticeship to become a blacksmith too. But Pip’s sister is always out to better their standing, so when she hears that the local landowner Miss Havisham wants a young boy to visit her home, she now see’s Pip as a vehicle to better things. At Miss Havisham’s Pip falls in love with her adopted daughter Estella and for the first time starts to dream of a better life for himself, only to be heartlessly sent away by Miss Havisham. Years later Pip is visited by Mr Jaggers a lawyer from London who informs him that he has a secret benefactor who wishes to pay for Pip to become a gentlemen. Pip moves to London to start his new life, and with high hopes he will finally see Estella again, and be her equal. However all is not as it seems.

I loved this show, I could hardly wait for the next instalment to come out! The costumes were authentic, the sets were sumptuous in their detail, and the mood was both eerie and dark in equal parts. You moved with ease following Pip from place to place; starting with the small but comfortable blacksmith cottage, to the decrepit grandeur of Miss Havisham’s hall, to the bustling streets of London, and the extravagant town houses of the gentle class. While many of these sets were quite colourful and extravagant all of it was filmed with a sort of grimy grey film to it which really kept your uneasiness high. On top of that some of the camera work used was wonderful, long sweeping shots of landscape, and scenes of movement. Plus some really interesting close-ups and focuses in scenes of drama.

One of the characters that had some of the best scenes and also the best performance was Miss Havisham, which was played by Gillian Anderson. Some have argued that Anderson was too young to play the part, nearly all performances of this character have been played very old. However I don’t agree. If you do the maths of when Miss Havisham was jilted and adopted Estella she can’t really now be much older than her forties, making a Anderson a perfect choice. And she was! Anderson played Miss Havisham as woman driven out of her mind by unrequited love rather than because she is old. Her being younger actually made it a lot creepier. I must also comment on the performances of the two youngest parts/actors. Douglas Booth as Pip is handsome, naive, foolish, but ultimately well-intentioned, while Vanessa Kirby was cold, calculated, vulnerable, but she also such a captivating beauty, the contrast between her looks and character was sometimes very surreal.

I highly recommend Great Expectations to all bookworms with a love of Dickens, adaptations, and haunting period dramas.

See also:

• The Crimson Petal and the White (2011)
• Sherlock (2010)
• The Day of the Triffids (2009)
• The Turn of the Screw (2009)

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