Masterpiece Classic: Great Expectations

Amazon.com There isn’t an adaptation around that can compete with David Lean’s definitive version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, but this BBC-PBS coproduction has its pleasures. Though it gets off to a grim start with a violent skirmish on the moors, the proceedings become less off-putting once naive young Pip (Toast’s Oscar Kennedy) grows into a man of some sophistication (now played by the dashing Douglas Booth). His adventures begin when the openhearted orphan helps out escaped convict Magwitch (Oliver Twist’s Ray Winstone in fiery form), little realizing the machinations he has set into motion. Afterward, his sister, who resents the burden of his presence, sends him to live with the reclusive Miss Havisham (Bleak House’s Gillian Anderson), a ghostly figure clinging to memories of thwarted romance. Miss Havisham means for Pip to entertain her haughty ward, Estella (Izzy Meikle-Small), with whom Pip falls in love, but the grown Estella (Vanessa Kirby) finds him unworthy and his guardian returns him to the forges of his youth. Fortunately, a mysterious benefactor steps in to save the day (David Suchet’s solicitor makes the arrangements), allowing Pip to reconnect with Estella and to befriend Herbert Pocket (Harry Lloyd, an actual Dickens descendant), but dark shadows lurk around every London corner. If Anderson, who opts for a too-high vocal register, looks young for the part and if the final sequence deviates from Dickens’s original text, director Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones) still provides a moving conclusion to a two-part series that becomes more involving as it unfolds. –Kathleen C. Fennessy Product Description Nothing is quite as it seems in this lush retelling of Dickens’ classic coming-of-age story with colorful characters – conspirators, rogues, rakes, and wretches – and stunning performances by Gillian Anderson, David Suchet, Ray Winstone, Douglas Booth, and Vanessa Kirby. Young orphan Pip wants no more from life than to one day join his brother-in-law Joe at the blacksmith’s forge. Until, that is, fate intervenes – twice. First, an escaped convict (Winstone) ambushes Pip in the marshes; and not long after, a wealthy, reclusive neighbor at the macabre Satis House – Miss Havisham (Andersen) – seeks Pip out as a playmate for her adopted daughter, Estella. Pip falls almost instantly in love with Estella, and realizes that he needs to be more than a simple blacksmith’s apprentice if he ever hopes to win her. But Miss Havisham – a bride-to-be who was jilted at the altar years ago and still wears her wedding dress amidst the fossilized ruins of her wedding feast – has gone to great lengths to ensure that Estella will never so much as risk heartbreak, raising her more as a tool for vengeance than a child. But when Pip is mysteriously plucked from obscurity and lured to London by an anonymous benefactor hoping to make a gentleman out of him, he suddenly has unlimited wealth at his disposal – and true love in his future. Or so he thinks.

Features

• DVD
• Multiple Formats, Color, NTSC
• English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), English (Unknown)
• 1
• 180