Great Expectations

Last Christmas, the BBC screened their wonderful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ magnificent Great Expectations. It was a sumptuous and faithful version of the source material, beautifully photographed and very well acted. Now, less than a year later, the Beeb have funded another version – and one has to wonder why?

Admittedly, this Great Expectations has pedigree: a script by David Nicholls, Mike Newell in the director’s chair and a stellar cast of British thespians including Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane. Why, then, is it such a stinker?

For the uninitiated, Great Expectations is the story of young Pip Pirrup (Jeremy Irvine), an orphan of humble origins who helps out an escaped convict by providing him with food and kindness – and a file with which to escape his shackles. Later, Pip becomes the playmate of young Estella (Holliday Grainger), daughter of wealthy local eccentric Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham Carter) – a woman still wearing her bridal dress years after being jilted on her wedding day.

In his teenage years, Pip becomes the recipient of a large income – contingent on his promise never to investigate who his mysterious benefactor is. Of course, he instantly assumes it’s Miss Havisham who’s funding his new lavish London lifestyle – and that his gentrification will ultimately lead to a marriage with Estella. But things are rarely so simple.

The problems with this adaptation are numerous, but chief among them is the lack of originality. It adds absolutely nothing to the canon of screen versions. Rather, it steals wholesale from those that preceded it, creating a pick and mix approach which rarely hangs together convincingly. Of course, this could be interpreted as faithfulness to the novel, but scenes such as Pip and Herbert’s fist-fight are so clearly lifted from David Lean’s film that it’s a little embarrassing.

The casting raises questions too. Jeremy Irvine is terribly wooden in the lead role, Holliday Grainger never quite convinces as the acerbic Estella and David Walliams is intensely irritating as Pumblechook. Predictably, Helena Bonham Carter is a fine Miss Havisham, but it’s such an obvious and lazy choice. Only Jason Flemyng  and Ewen Bremner really inhabit their roles – and sadly they’re not on screen enough.

Some of the design decisions are strange to say the least. While period London looks great, some of the costumes are frankly bizarre. The obnoxious city gents with which Pip fraternises look like they’ve stepped off the set of an Adam Ant video and most of Estella’s dresses are simply horrible.

Miss Havisham looks the part: a greying, decaying pile of hair and rags. The costume provides a couple of chilling moments as she invites characters under her veil to whisper conspiratorially with her, but this is undermined by a distractingly prominent cleavage and some strange shadows which fall across her face.

The biggest gripe with the film, however, is in the narrative. Written in serial, critics of Dickens’ work have often pointed to an unlikely set of coincidences and plot contrivances that pile up in the final act. Here, that feeling is multiplied exponentially. There are few clues given as to what’s really going on, meaning that when the final series of revelations arrive they feel hurried and ill-considered. An audience unfamiliar with Great Expectations would almost certainly feel short-changed.

It’s hard to avoid the feeling that there are scenes of exposition sitting on a cutting room floor somewhere – snipped out to trim the running time to a manageable 128 minutes. Mike Newell would have been better served adding that material back into the film, allowing himself three hours to tell the story and restoring lost characters and scenes. But then he’d have made the three-hour serialisation the BBC made last year. And what would be the point of that?

The IMDB Top 50 Challenge #15 Fight Club

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll be aware that this review can go no further unless I break the first two rules. But to refuse to write about David Fincher’s combustible classic would be utterly absurd... I am going to talk about Fight Club.

Chuck Palahniuk has been writing incendiary, controversially nihilistic novels for quite some time. David Fincher has been directing stylishly violent and nihilistic movies for even longer. And Brad Pitt has been flashing his diamond-cut abdominals on celluloid since his acting debut in Thelma & Louise. But despite their many successes, maybe all three of these cultural behemoths could point to Fight Club as their crowning glory.

Director Fincher was the ideal man to helm the silver-screen version of Palahniuk’s source material – his previous films were pitch-black, paranoid, off-kilter gems like Se7en and the criminally underrated The Game. Bringing in Pitt and Edward Norton (fresh from his portrayal as a muscular Neo-Nazi in American History X) was inspired, and employing The Dust Brothers on soundtrack duties was a masterstroke. Between them, they produced one of the most iconic, oft-quoted, visually arresting films of the nineties – perhaps of all time.

Living in his impersonal Ikea-like apartment, Norton’s nameless Narrator explains how he came to reject consumerism in favour of anarchy. Suffering crippling insomnia, a doctor advises him that real misery can only be witnessed in a support group for sufferers of testicular cancer. Far from curing him of his malady, the experience thrills him, leading to an addiction for similar groups for the terminally ill. Here, he meets fellow ‘tourist’, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman with whom he forms a wholly unhealthy co-dependency.

Even stranger than Marla is Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a charismatic soap salesman whom the Narrator meets on an internal flight. After swapping business cards, the pair are forced under the same roof when the former’s apartment is blown to pieces in a mysterious gas explosion. In Tyler’s squalid home, and under his new friend’s nefarious influence, the Narrator gradually begins to let go of his neuroses and obsession with stuff and things - before finally rediscovering his masculinity in a series of testosterone fuelled brawls in car-parks and basements. These are Fight Clubs, where emancipated men can rediscover their primitive selves through visceral violence – and where the seeds of the anarchic Project Mayhem are planted.

Despite Edward Norton’s excellent performance and superb supporting turns from Bonham Carter and Meat Loaf, the movie belongs to Brad Pitt. His Tyler Durden is a cult classic character - when ASOS initially launched itself in the UK it sold copies of practically every item in Tyler’s wardrobe, and he was voted Empire’s number one film character of all time. Little wonder. Tyler Durden the man other men want to be: he’s absurdly good looking, built like a brick shit-house and cooler than a penguin’s frosty bits. But Tyler is about more than just appearances. he’s a magnetic rebel-with-a-cause, pissing in your soup, fucking your girlfriend and beating the shit out of you – but still able to convince you that his anti-consumerist, violent brand of anti-social behaviour is an attractive and viable proposition.

Admittedly, Fight Club does unravel somewhat as it hurtles towards its inevitable conclusion. This is partly due to Tyler Durden disappearing for a while, but mainly thanks to the escalation of Project Mayhem’s war on society: the Narrator’s early disillusionment is easily understood, and his gripes familiar to many – but as he becomes the unwitting ringleader of his guerrilla army it’s increasingly difficult to empathise with their all-out assault on civilisation. That said, Tyler’s shaven-headed return comes with a magnificent twist which you really ought to have seen coming...

Fight Club is an unlikely mixture of visceral violence, exhilarating action and social comment: a film about masculinity-under-attack which leaves its audience battered, bloodied and utterly exhilarated. A masterpiece.

The King's Speech

Despite widespread praise for The King’s Speech, i approached with caution. It’s a drama about the British royal family (yawn) and concerns a character (a king, no less) overcoming a terrible affliction. Handled well it could be interminably dull and clichéd. Handled badly, it might be difficult to stay awake until the final credits.

I needn’t have worried. It’s a magnificent film. Utterly absorbing, filled to the brim with acting talent, wonderfully scripted and far funnier than it has any right to be. Focusing on King George VI’s ascent to the throne it has a dash of scandal, a generous helping of World War II and some inspired profanity. But more than anything else it’s a love story – albeit an untraditional one.

The Duke of York (Bertie to his friends, George VI in later life, Colin Firth to us) suffers from a terrible stammer. Having visited speech therapist after speech therapist and endured some – frankly preposterous – ‘remedies’ he is ready to resign himself to a life of stuttering. But as public speaking becomes an increasingly important part of his life, his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) uncovers the lugubrious Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a maverick Australian who’s convinced his unconventional methods can end Bertie’s troubles.

The love story in question is not that of Bertie and Elizabeth (although Bonham-Carter does a wonderful job of displaying her character’s adoration), but that of the Duke and his therapist. Both Firth and Rush give career-best performances – Firth’s misanthropic and starchy Bertie thawing in front of our eyes whilst Rush steals all the best lines and lights up the screen with his rumpled charm and twinkling eyes.

The relationship between the two leading men is utterly engaging. There is obvious chemistry between them and their dialogue is wittily and snappily scripted –Bertie’s stammer is far less pronounced when he’s angry! Gradually Lionel’s refusal to stand on ceremony and his stubbornness overcome his regal patient and the two become friends. This, it seems, has been the key all along. Once trust has been established the two work attempt to get to the bottom of the cause of Bertie’s affliction – and not a moment too soon.

Around the central characters whirl a plethora of British thespians bringing life to the historical figures central to the story. Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi are excellent as George V and the Archbishop of Canterbury respectively. Yet it’s Timothy Spall who threatens to steal the limelight in a wonderful portrayal of Winston Churchill.

The King’s Speech is a fantastic film which finds a fine balance between characterisation and historical accuracy. As someone with little time or knowledge of the monarchy i was informed and educated by the story of Edward’s scandalous abdication from the throne as Britain stumbled inexorably towards war. But more importantly, i was seduced by a truly heartwarming tale of friendship and love played out by two actors at the top of their game.