![]() ![]() ![]() This film's running time is 128 minutes, which means, applying the screenplay formula of one page per minute, that screenwriter David Nicholls checked into a nervous hospital after adapting this thing. "Great Expectations" runs about 400 to 600 pages, depending on the edition. (Yes, they still shoot movies on film sometimes.) Newell's production designer, Jim Clay, and cinematographer, John Mathieson, both veterans of epic films, cover the "expansive" part by cramming extravagant sets and convincing costumes into a wide Technovision frame. Still, "Dickensian" isn't just in the details but in the expansive social vision, a Victorian stew of cruelty, sentimentality and moral reckoning. It's a lot more interesting than Pip's lifelong pursuit of bitchy, beautiful Estella (breathsnatching Holliday Grainger). Their friendship, strained after Pip leaves Joe's side as his blacksmith apprentice to accept the anonymously bestowed gift of a fortune, plays achingly real. Newell was wise to cast Jeremy Irvine as the young adult Pip and Jason Flemyng as his doting uncle Joe. ![]()
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