After growing up as an orphan with his blacksmith uncle (Flemyng) and caterwauling aunt (Hawkins), young Pip (Irvine) is given the chance to live as a gentleman in London. He knows that his secret benefactor is the batty Miss Havisham (Bonham Carter), for whom he worked as a young boy. He's still in love with her adopted daughter Estella (Grainger), so in his newly refined state he sets about wooing her anew. Then the crazed prison escapee Magwitch (Fiennes) catches up with him, and the interconnections between everyone begin to become clear.

Dickens' plot plays like a soap opera, packed with coincidences, revelations, rivalries and bitter jealousies that pop up for no real reason other than to hook the audience's attention. This makes it fun to watch, as it cycles from warm family drama to blackly comical intrigue to romantic angst to a full-on action thriller. And Newell plays it safe with a straightforward approach that's only livened up by the nutty side characters.

The supporting actors over-act shamelessly in an effort to show up against the overwrought set design. Everything looks deliberately cluttered and worn, not by years of neglect but by an overzealous art director. Indeed, some tattered linen remains picturesquely flung in Havisham's stairwell for decades, despite the fact that she would have dislodged it with layers of wedding veils the first time she walked up the steps. Fortunately, Bonham Carter locates the humanity behind Havisham's bulging eyes in ways Fiennes never quite does with Magwitch.

Meanwhile, Irvine gives a sensitive, sympathetic performance that has some real steel behind it. (His brother Toby, as the younger Pip, is another actor to watch.) So as the story begins to circle in on itself just a bit too deliberately, we go along with it because of the emotion in Pip's eyes. His tender moments with Grainger are genuinely moving, but it's the scenes with Flemyng that linger afterwards. And these might be reason enough to see this adaptation.

themes, violence

24.Sep.12