Great Expectations

Showing @ Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle until Mon 10 Dec

Mike Newell / UK/USA / 2011 / 128 min

It’s unfortunate that director Mike Newell has had a bash at Dickens’ thirteenth novel only a year after the gloriously fiery BBC series. Now on what must be its millionth outing, Newell offers a heartlessly plain account of Pip’s (Jeremy Irvine) emergence from impoverished labour boy to Lord of the Manor.

There’s always a contemporary slot for Dickens, the author’s familiar observations about ambition, class divide, industry and finance growing with urgency as each year passes. It’s ludicrous that Newell abandons many of the subtle themes of social freedom, justice and reward that resonate more fiercely with today’s condition than the broader notions of love and lust. Pip’s experiences of adulthood, estrangement and deliverance are forfeited for a glossier, aesthetically mindful contribution from Newell.

The genius of Dickens wrestles to the surface of almost every adaptation, but here it battles against flippancy and indulgence, with far too much space given to the film’s illustrious cast and not enough to refreshing the discourse. Even then, the performances from Helena Bonham Carter (Miss Havisham), Robbie Coltrane (Jaggers) and Sally Hawkins (Mrs. Joe) are bland and the hierarchies are minimised by Newell who transforms the tale into more of a simplistic love story. At times, it feels like a brooding Brontë and the mood is nowhere near as dark as previous attempts, despite its edge of Gothic melodrama.

Though Newell has maintained the Georgian period and avoided cheapening the story with modernisation, he hasn’t formed any novel opinions on Dickens. It’s a lacklustre version chipping away at themes of social stratification and economic upheaval without diving headfirst into them. Its hesitation is its undoing; Newell’s take is boring, uninspired and repackaged, and the film is a perfect example of how hot and cold he blows as a director. It’s anchored by countless tatty scenes reminiscent of his earlier TV career and is possibly one of the dreariest stabs at Dickens in some time. Film adaptations of Great Expectations have often lived in the shadow of David Lean’s 1946 version, still considered to be the best to date, and Newell is miles from iterating anything as bracing about Dickensian commentary.

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