This is not the first time Stephen Knight has worked with works by Charles Dickens: he recreated the famous “A Christmas Carol” four years ago. The picture with an excellent cast (Guy Pearce played the stern Scrooge, and the ghost played by Andy Serkis poisoned him for all the mistakes of the past) caused a measured reaction from the audience – the work of the British classic was filmed many times and so persistently that, another attempt in the ranks of competitors was simply lost.
The new “Great Expectations” also cause controversial impressions. The series appears to be a literal reincarnation of the book that the project’s target audience already knew by heart.
This is a well-known story about the orphaned teenager Pip (Dunkirk star Finn Whitehead), who lives with his sister and her blacksmith husband. Knowing all kinds of challenges from an early age, a child is obsessed with one goal in life – getting into people. One day in the cemetery, where the hero regularly visits his mother’s grave, he encounters a dangerous criminal who threatens to help him. The good-natured (or simple-minded) Pip saves a stranger, and the repercussions of this act will reach him years later.
In parallel, the lonely and wealthy Miss Havisham (Olivia Colman) pays attention to Pip. She lives in a semi-abandoned mansion, does not take off her old wedding dress, and alone raises (or rather, educates) her adopted daughter, Estella. Miss Havisham had once been abandoned at the altar by her fiancee, who had cheated on her. Now traumatized and broken inside, this woman intends to take revenge on the entire male race in the person of Estella.
She raises her arrogant and repulsive cold: Estella does not know how to love and must not learn it. Having spent several years at Miss Havisham’s house learning all the intricacies of a true gentleman, Pip slowly falls in love with Estella, but of course unrequitedly.
He soon becomes an undercover boss who helps the young man move to London and gain a respectable position in society. But his girlfriend’s coldness, disappointment and ideals poison Pip from the inside: everything seems futile, the world is a trap, high hopes are not fulfilled.
Great Expectations is the monumental and perhaps central novel in Dickens’ career: multi-layered, detailed, and well-loved. At different times, not only one of the filmmakers brought it to the big screen: from Mike Newell, the director of the fourth “Harry Potter”, to the Mexican genius Alfons Cuaron, who picked up today’s rhyme for the story – the action, the film transferred from scratch to New York.
Not indifferent to retro stories (“Peaky Blinders”, “Taboo”, “Leader Woman”), Knight refuses to deviate too much from the original text and remains faithful to it to the end. But this authorial commitment works equally well for and against the film adaptation itself. The series, which lacks new readings, author’s searches and artistic discoveries, seems to be a quality but not necessary project that no one wants.
But where Knight refuses to innovate in content, a new form tries to work with him, with the anticipated Ridley Scott in the producer chair and Tom Hardy appearing unexpectedly there. The creators of the project make their own revision of the classics and give the role of Estella to black actress Shalom Brune-Franklin. Similarly, the roles of the English nobility are distributed among the characters of the second plan.
While this reimagining of history is in line with the hit “Bridgerton” or the latest “Reason”, it pulls the audience in different directions. While some were enraged at the author’s freedom, others, on the contrary, began to defend it.
And setting aside the overtly racist critical comments, it’s hard to disagree with those who criticize the novelty not because of the skin color of the heroine, but because of the sheer misuse of the actress playing the part. Estella in the book was such a fantastic beauty that no man could resist. This was important for understanding her image: like a mythical goddess, she attracts and destroys anyone who falls on the hook. Undoubtedly attractive and talented Brune-Franklin is deprived of this important trait of her character due to a completely different acting body.
Those who agree with the vision of the authors of the series are right in the opinion that Estella’s origin is not sought even in the work itself, and the eccentric and provocative high society Miss Havisham can deliberately take a dark-skinned girl as herself. The student seems quite logical.
At the same time, the format of the series caused strong reactions from the audience. While the project has been criticized for the dryness of the presentation, which deprives the original Dickensian way of speaking from recognizable fleshiness, the gloom that Knight proposes removes the colorfulness and diversity from the picture: endless mist replaces inexhaustible snow, and gray day – hopeless night .
And while subsequent episodes may defy audience claims, so far the series looks like a memento for a much narrower circle of experts than a mass audience, a significant portion of whom may not have read the original novel.