Movielogr
Great Expectations (2011)
Directed by Brian Kirk
Overview
‘Great Expectations’ opens with Pip as a boy (played as an young man by newcomer Douglas Booth, ‘The Pillars of the Earth’) on the marshes near his home, where he encounters the desperate escapee Magwitch (Winstone). Pip is coerced into stealing a metal file to break Magwitch’s chains, but the boy willingly snares a piece of meat pie to feed the famished man. So begins a classic coming-of-age story about innate kindness and learned indifference. Young Pip expects no more from life than to join his brother-in-law Joe at the blacksmith’s forge. But fate intervenes when the neighboring rich eccentric Miss Havisham (Anderson) seeks Pip out as a playmate for her adopted daughter, Estella (Vanessa Kirby, ‘The Hour’). This sets Pip on a course that sees him tested in many ways, not least in being thrown into a wish-fulfillment paradise for a young man, where he has the pleasures of London at his disposal and true love - and great expectations - in his future. Or so he thinks.
Length 180 minutes
Actors
Ray Winstone | Gillian Anderson | Mark Addy | David Suchet | Susan Lynch | Frances Barber | Paul Ritter | Tom Burke | Dave Legeno | Claire Rushbrook | Paul Rhys | Shaun Dooley | Mary Roscoe | Harry Lloyd | Perdita Weeks | Jack Roth | Douglas Booth | Vanessa Kirby