by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
When I was in college, I read a lot of literature because I was an English major. Some of the more prominent literature I read was British and European, since there’s so much more to choose from, as opposed to American literature. It also doesn’t hurt that I like Europe literature more than American. Some of my favorite stories of all time came from my time in college, but others came from when I was in high school, which is where I first encountered Great Expectations. Charles Dickens’ classic portrays the hypocrisy of classism, and how London isn’t the glamorous place people think it is.
The FX limited series for Great Expectations is almost unrecognizable from the source.
Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: Creative individuals should be allowed to take liberties with existing properties to tell the story they want to tell. I’m not someone who thinks that a story should be adapted verbatim. There are always going to be some things which won’t fit into the story, or which don’t make sense from a timing standpoint. So all of this is to say, creative people should create.
That doesn’t mean I have to agree with the changes they make for me.
I’ll discuss some of the things I like first. Like most content involving Great Expectations, the costumes and set design are on point. Since the story is about classism, the costumes range from dirty and in tatters, to high society and pristine clothing. The sets are in a similar vein. We see things like a blacksmith shop and a community church in a smaller town, to the grand streets of London. The whole aesthetics of Great Expectations are great.
The one true standout character is Miss Havisham (Olivia Colman). They’ve made some changes, but what remains is Ms. Havisham being a cold, calculating, and jaded woman who is on a warpath to destroy people around her. Colman is unsurprisingly outstanding, and she does an amazing job of portraying a larger-than-life character. The other two main characters, Pip (Fionn Whitehead) and Estella (Shalom Brune-Franklin), are wonderfully portrayed, and have a lot of great moments. I found Brune-Franklin in particular captivating as Estella, who not an easy character to perform. She’s someone I will be keeping an eye on moving forward.
These are unfortunately all the things I enjoyed about Great Expectations.
There are a few blunders for Great Expectations that I couldn’t get behind. The first is that the lighting in this is consistently dark. It makes certain things hard to see, and unless the darkness is supposed to be a metaphor for London or the clarity one gets from becoming a gentleman, it is distracting. Next, I do not recall there being as much cursing in the book as there is in the limited series. It feels out of place, introducing modern language into a Victorian-era story. Unfortunately, it took me out of the story, and the more it happened, the harder it got to get back in.
Finally — and this is perhaps the biggest issue I have — Great Expectations changes a lot about the story by not including certain characters from the book, and by adding scenes that feel unnecessary. The unincluded characters aren’t main characters, but they help give Pip characterization and propel the story forward. But the added scenes are the more egregious decision. I understand that Great Expectations is not the most action-filled story, as it’s dialogue-heavy and story-driven. The motivation behind the action scenes was to make the story more exciting, but it was a cheap attempt to make the story better, and it fails in its function. I didn’t come into this wanting to watch a Guy Richie-esque retelling of Great Expectations.
Bonus issue: they changed the ending of the novel. I’m torn with how I feel about the ending, because a part of me likes the final outcome. I just don’t think the journey for Pip in particular is completely earned. He goes through two events (also not in the book) that I don’t like. Maybe they wanted to change Pip’s story to give him more of an edge, or make his path even harder than it already was, but the changes go too far in an attempt to make the story gritty.
Great Expectations is a rare blip from FX. I appreciate what Dean Baker (who was the producer for Taboo) is trying to do, but it just goes too far in the other direction for me to like it. The performances are strong overall, particularly from the leads, and the costumes and set designs are great, but the story is just too different for it to make sense, and doesn’t do the book justice. It’s hard to believe that I like the South Park version of this better than this, because it at least has some of the comedy Dickens’ novel is going for. This, sadly, was a joyless experience for me. Stick with the book.
Score: 4/10
Great Expectations is currently streaming on Hulu
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