Great Expectations
Oct. 18th, 2006 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethGreat Expectations on DVD, black and white with John Mills
Watched on the computer because I expect it would look terrible on the 32"
Whiny music. Strings. Blah.
And doesn't exactly look stellar even at this size.
Very boring and slow. Not chatty at all.
oops, got the contrast way low.
Right, turned it up.
Opens on the moors. Pip arrives at a run, past the water, and the places look
like hanging. Very big and flat. Lucky sky looks stripy too.
Flowers in hand, climbs over the wall to the churchyard. Very wonky looking
place. Really working the spooky. Ties it to landscape well before a person
turns up.
Didn't turn him upside down properly. Tombstone he's sat on is much smaller than
him too, which don't seem right to me.
Pip isn't half talking posh. Which, you know, typical, but.
Huh. His house looks huge.
Joe's got dark hair, and talks so slow he sounds retarded compared to the others.
So far they've got 4 different accents.
Back to showing the spooky landscape.
ooh, voiceover to show us what he's remembering.
There's a lot of detail in here. Nifty. Wonder how long this is, to have so
much detail?
Hmm, and yet not the right foods.
And they missed out bolting, and bread in the trousers, and tar water...
SO my feeling there's a ton of detail is more like recognising all the details it
did use.
Cows talking to him do make you wonder what kind of film this is. I mean, not
knowing the book, its perfectly possible he's in a world where actual cows
actually do talk. But we've had the bits from before where its just the same as
we've heard, so sounds like memories.
He just now found the man with the scar.
Big scar on his face.
And now he's back at the cemetery... efficient I guess. And explaining why Pip
runs past the mentioned places instead of watching him away.
... Pip asked permission to leave.
heh, interesting way to arrange the table, only Pip and JOe with their backs to
us, the others all confronting us.
Skips through 'naterally vicious' to 'pork pie'
For all the huge outsides of that house there's only one room inside. Not right.
Also the manacles are a bit weak looking.
low budget, exact same places all over again.
splashy mud :-)
and it takes us to the water side, shows him going down to get in the hulk...
even though its a new and not cheap set. Makes me realise the significance of
water later on.
film doesn't trust us to notice things without being told. He says out loud
about the stopped clocks.
The house is huge. You can tell because the stairs go every which way.
Miss H is more fat than skeletal. And everything has spider webs on. Specially
the bible, if I read it right.
it left out him telling lies and skips straight to going back again.
Also makes the cake kind of vaguely recogniseable.
But spiderweb everywhere.
Miss H has huge hair.
missed out the 'on this table' speech, missed a huge chunk of creepy right there.
The 'pale young gentleman' has more muscles than I've ever seen on a ittle kid.
Bones too. Peculiar.
Looks even more bizarre than it sounded.
they missed out most of the gothic ...
Hang on, three months later my sister became ill and was laid to rest in the
marshes.
huh?
they undid the whole Orlick thing?
And now Biddy arrives, after Mrs Joe is dead? But that doesn't make any sense.
And now Biddy is much, much older than Pip. Much. Joe's age, looks.
Most peculiar.
completely changes the story.
completely changed Pip's leaving Miss H to be apprentice. Skips the whole bound
thing. Skips Joe. Skips handing him from Miss H to Joe. Gives gold to Pip!
All wrong. All wrong.
"It was in the sixth year of my apprenticeship"
and then the lawyer shows up at their door.
Oh dear, he don't look twenty. He really don't.
But they simplified the ages to simplify the actors I imagine.
also, having a guardian makes less sense at that age. it all makes less sense at
that age.
Pouring the money out makes it look cheap.
Joe has been damn near left out. Looks stupid and stuff.
Whoever is telling this story thinks there's no story but Pip/Estella and the
Havisham dream and, I can only assume, the (very) secret thing with the convict.
Damn but that's a silly looking outfit.
"This is a very gay figure Pip"
yes, yes it really is.
He's also the only one in sight looks quite that stupid.
And Joe and Biddy see him off on the coach! Well that's quite upside down.
Jaggers settles him with Herbert, instead of it being a choice.
And he put a figure on the allowance.
meh.
The hangman's noose in the background is a nice touch.
Woman at work? But that destroys an important dichotomy.
Oh dear, Herbert = Obi Wan (the elder)
Had to open the door by running at it.
Oh dear god, they're making a mess of the dialogue.
I mean the accents alone make it difficult, but...
Heh, I turned the sound right down, and looking at the body language...
Between the gay clothes and the moving around so and the... everything
Herbert/Pip do surely show up rather
His lessons are all dancing now?
Heh, with a man playing violin! I mean dancing with a man.
And now fencing.
Damn it, in the books there were books and books and more books.
In the film there's manly half naked boxing.
And... The camera angles on this... He's standing behind the lawyer and all
being told 'carry on' and it looks... dodgy. And then teh lawyer pays him.
And now there's a party. Lots of men. Many men. Laughing. Man party.
Heh, they're adding up their debts.
The desk and noose and all makes it look very much like court when he's sat
talking to Jaggers.
I suddenly had the oddest idea that GE was very much like what happened with
Anakin. Who had Great Expectations of being the saviour of the Jedi, and
succeeded only in becoming asnob Sith.
Its the actor thing.
Oh blah, they've got the bit with the hat. Comedy Joe. They've cut out so much
of him he don't make any good kind of sense, just this messy bumpkin person.
Grown up Estella isn't half as pretty as the young Estella would grow up to be.
Damn it, the subtitles don't match the speaking. I've had the volume off for a
while so I didn't know for sure.
They said gay again. And again. And again.
Estella is, you see, gay.
And now he's dancing with Estella. Clue dude - she's built to break men's
hearts! Gay!
And now Bentley Drummle arrives out of nowhere. Blah.
They've missed out everything about the good Pockets entirely.
It means the only thing Herbert is about is debt and frivolity. Erases entirely
the good things about him. We haven't even heard that he has work (unpaid, but
attempted).
There's bunches of screen time spent on complicated dancing, and none on the
important story. This Estella stuff is not hardly the point.
Except the deceive and entrap bit. Thank goodness they kept that.
Ah, and now its a rainy night, so it must be the convict.
Oh look, Pip is reading. Wonder when he learned how.
What is Magwitch doing with an eye patch? I don't recall such from the book.
"Game 'un" and "Gay man" sound *exactly the same* in that accent.
*facepalm*
...okay, possibly not exactly. But still.
I don't think this version is very good at all. Bit annoying really.
There's a half naked boxer on the mantlepiece. In a painting.
bit with the little book-
"Kiss it"!
Speech with Estella knitting. Going to be married.
That is a very ugly dress.
This 'what you've done' speech is very badly done.
and right away Miss H gets set on fire
and he hears the screams and doesn't go back right away but keeps walking for a
few seconds. Different,
Interesting bit with the tablecloth. Very logical, that it should be so hard to
pick up, and should tear.
Oooh, he leaves it over her face. I rather think she's fried dead already.
He's bandaged up now.
And now is the very first time he meets Aged P. Doesn't make Wemmick his friend
yet. Doesn't work.
Also is quite innappropriate to be here in the middle of the action.
Herbert's fiancee is missing from the story as well. That don't half make it
more dodgy.
He's been in a white hat at least since the convict turned up.
Hang on, Magwitch lost the eyepatch. Huh?
The whole rowing plan happens after he got burned. That makes it entirely
stupid.
And the whole thing they're making a speech of is just... Doesn't fit as a
speech, really don't. Why not just do showing?
You know what they also skipped? Pip using his expectations to fund Herbert in
work. That makes it so Pip never did *any* good thing with it. And that being
so, it can't be that it comes out well for him at the end.
I bet they have him snuggly with Estella. Blah.
Huh, him and Herbert shake hands goodbye teh buoy puts bars between them.
Interesting.
Pip dives in and gets all heroic pulling Magwitch out the way of the paddle
wheel.
Pity that makes him not injured, logically.
"If he had a child, the money would go to the child"
Ah! Now I can see how they get a redeeming moment out of it. Trying to get
Estella money!
... Hang on, if he's also still set on marrying her, that don't look right at
all.
Oh, bugger, now the lawyer is doing all the telling, and Pip didn't figure
anything out at all.
I tell you, if this were the only version I'd seen, I'd wonder why Pip was even
in it, let alone the protagonist. What does he do? Bugger all.
... And the 'put the case' leads up to justifying Jaggers giving the child for
adoption.
How does Pip conclude she should never be told?
Why is it up to Jaggers to point out she has a claim to property?
Bloody useless mess this is.
Oh look, he's dying now for no readily apparent reason.
So there's the deathbed thingy, "And I love her"
and then convict kisses Pip's hand
the same way Pip kissed Miss H's hand when he thought her his benefactor.
And now he's dead.
And now Pip keels over. Bit unexpected, all things considered.
And it actually is Joe looks after him when he wakes. All the other bits of Joe
they took out I was wondering.
Oh wonderful, no subtitles.
Where did Herbert go? He isn't home, he isn't in teh story since the bit in the
boat.
Did he drown?
Joe brought Pip home? ??? ? ? But the point was he never did.
And now he's congratulating them on their marriage... That fits far less well
when they've been living together with no reason for so very long.
And now he's wandering around an empty house. Well that ain't right neither,
even if it does give him flashback voice. The point of the misty ending was the
old was all wrecked and that made space for the new. Whatever ending could fit
in this would be completely mausoleum trapped.
"I have no husband Pip"
"When MR Jaggers disclosed to Bentley Drummle my true parentage, he no longer
wished to have me for a wife."
... This changes the ideological basis of the ending immensely.
"I've now no need to sell the house. It is mine and I shall live here. I shall
like it here Pip, away from teh world and all its complications."
And he sees the bible exactly like Ms Havisham left it.
And now Pip is trying to get Estella to leave and Estella is fighting to stay!
What the flying fuck?!
"I have come back, to let in the sunlight!"
Pip breaks down the shutters, and oh look Estella is all changed!
If I thought the book was difficult to read feminist, see what the film does to
Estella - not a moment of agency of her own whatsoever.
"You're part of my existence, part of myself" says Pip. Like he ate her!
And now he's all "Look at me" And oh dear there's going to be a kiss. Oh good, a hug, phew.
"We belong to each other, let's start again, together"
And they run off out the gate together..
Okay, I think I really *hate* that version. I mean it was bad enough in the book, but at least there was some doubt about it. Now it makes it all about the 'romance', all about Pip, and... *shudders*
Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
... I have definite opinions on this.
So, anyways, I watched it.
Glad I waited until I'd finished reading.
I quite like the book. But the film was terrible.
Watched on the computer because I expect it would look terrible on the 32"
Whiny music. Strings. Blah.
And doesn't exactly look stellar even at this size.
Very boring and slow. Not chatty at all.
oops, got the contrast way low.
Right, turned it up.
Opens on the moors. Pip arrives at a run, past the water, and the places look
like hanging. Very big and flat. Lucky sky looks stripy too.
Flowers in hand, climbs over the wall to the churchyard. Very wonky looking
place. Really working the spooky. Ties it to landscape well before a person
turns up.
Didn't turn him upside down properly. Tombstone he's sat on is much smaller than
him too, which don't seem right to me.
Pip isn't half talking posh. Which, you know, typical, but.
Huh. His house looks huge.
Joe's got dark hair, and talks so slow he sounds retarded compared to the others.
So far they've got 4 different accents.
Back to showing the spooky landscape.
ooh, voiceover to show us what he's remembering.
There's a lot of detail in here. Nifty. Wonder how long this is, to have so
much detail?
Hmm, and yet not the right foods.
And they missed out bolting, and bread in the trousers, and tar water...
SO my feeling there's a ton of detail is more like recognising all the details it
did use.
Cows talking to him do make you wonder what kind of film this is. I mean, not
knowing the book, its perfectly possible he's in a world where actual cows
actually do talk. But we've had the bits from before where its just the same as
we've heard, so sounds like memories.
He just now found the man with the scar.
Big scar on his face.
And now he's back at the cemetery... efficient I guess. And explaining why Pip
runs past the mentioned places instead of watching him away.
... Pip asked permission to leave.
heh, interesting way to arrange the table, only Pip and JOe with their backs to
us, the others all confronting us.
Skips through 'naterally vicious' to 'pork pie'
For all the huge outsides of that house there's only one room inside. Not right.
Also the manacles are a bit weak looking.
low budget, exact same places all over again.
splashy mud :-)
and it takes us to the water side, shows him going down to get in the hulk...
even though its a new and not cheap set. Makes me realise the significance of
water later on.
film doesn't trust us to notice things without being told. He says out loud
about the stopped clocks.
The house is huge. You can tell because the stairs go every which way.
Miss H is more fat than skeletal. And everything has spider webs on. Specially
the bible, if I read it right.
it left out him telling lies and skips straight to going back again.
Also makes the cake kind of vaguely recogniseable.
But spiderweb everywhere.
Miss H has huge hair.
missed out the 'on this table' speech, missed a huge chunk of creepy right there.
The 'pale young gentleman' has more muscles than I've ever seen on a ittle kid.
Bones too. Peculiar.
Looks even more bizarre than it sounded.
they missed out most of the gothic ...
Hang on, three months later my sister became ill and was laid to rest in the
marshes.
huh?
they undid the whole Orlick thing?
And now Biddy arrives, after Mrs Joe is dead? But that doesn't make any sense.
And now Biddy is much, much older than Pip. Much. Joe's age, looks.
Most peculiar.
completely changes the story.
completely changed Pip's leaving Miss H to be apprentice. Skips the whole bound
thing. Skips Joe. Skips handing him from Miss H to Joe. Gives gold to Pip!
All wrong. All wrong.
"It was in the sixth year of my apprenticeship"
and then the lawyer shows up at their door.
Oh dear, he don't look twenty. He really don't.
But they simplified the ages to simplify the actors I imagine.
also, having a guardian makes less sense at that age. it all makes less sense at
that age.
Pouring the money out makes it look cheap.
Joe has been damn near left out. Looks stupid and stuff.
Whoever is telling this story thinks there's no story but Pip/Estella and the
Havisham dream and, I can only assume, the (very) secret thing with the convict.
Damn but that's a silly looking outfit.
"This is a very gay figure Pip"
yes, yes it really is.
He's also the only one in sight looks quite that stupid.
And Joe and Biddy see him off on the coach! Well that's quite upside down.
Jaggers settles him with Herbert, instead of it being a choice.
And he put a figure on the allowance.
meh.
The hangman's noose in the background is a nice touch.
Woman at work? But that destroys an important dichotomy.
Oh dear, Herbert = Obi Wan (the elder)
Had to open the door by running at it.
Oh dear god, they're making a mess of the dialogue.
I mean the accents alone make it difficult, but...
Heh, I turned the sound right down, and looking at the body language...
Between the gay clothes and the moving around so and the... everything
Herbert/Pip do surely show up rather
His lessons are all dancing now?
Heh, with a man playing violin! I mean dancing with a man.
And now fencing.
Damn it, in the books there were books and books and more books.
In the film there's manly half naked boxing.
And... The camera angles on this... He's standing behind the lawyer and all
being told 'carry on' and it looks... dodgy. And then teh lawyer pays him.
And now there's a party. Lots of men. Many men. Laughing. Man party.
Heh, they're adding up their debts.
The desk and noose and all makes it look very much like court when he's sat
talking to Jaggers.
I suddenly had the oddest idea that GE was very much like what happened with
Anakin. Who had Great Expectations of being the saviour of the Jedi, and
succeeded only in becoming a
Its the actor thing.
Oh blah, they've got the bit with the hat. Comedy Joe. They've cut out so much
of him he don't make any good kind of sense, just this messy bumpkin person.
Grown up Estella isn't half as pretty as the young Estella would grow up to be.
Damn it, the subtitles don't match the speaking. I've had the volume off for a
while so I didn't know for sure.
They said gay again. And again. And again.
Estella is, you see, gay.
And now he's dancing with Estella. Clue dude - she's built to break men's
hearts! Gay!
And now Bentley Drummle arrives out of nowhere. Blah.
They've missed out everything about the good Pockets entirely.
It means the only thing Herbert is about is debt and frivolity. Erases entirely
the good things about him. We haven't even heard that he has work (unpaid, but
attempted).
There's bunches of screen time spent on complicated dancing, and none on the
important story. This Estella stuff is not hardly the point.
Except the deceive and entrap bit. Thank goodness they kept that.
Ah, and now its a rainy night, so it must be the convict.
Oh look, Pip is reading. Wonder when he learned how.
What is Magwitch doing with an eye patch? I don't recall such from the book.
"Game 'un" and "Gay man" sound *exactly the same* in that accent.
*facepalm*
...okay, possibly not exactly. But still.
I don't think this version is very good at all. Bit annoying really.
There's a half naked boxer on the mantlepiece. In a painting.
bit with the little book-
"Kiss it"!
Speech with Estella knitting. Going to be married.
That is a very ugly dress.
This 'what you've done' speech is very badly done.
and right away Miss H gets set on fire
and he hears the screams and doesn't go back right away but keeps walking for a
few seconds. Different,
Interesting bit with the tablecloth. Very logical, that it should be so hard to
pick up, and should tear.
Oooh, he leaves it over her face. I rather think she's fried dead already.
He's bandaged up now.
And now is the very first time he meets Aged P. Doesn't make Wemmick his friend
yet. Doesn't work.
Also is quite innappropriate to be here in the middle of the action.
Herbert's fiancee is missing from the story as well. That don't half make it
more dodgy.
He's been in a white hat at least since the convict turned up.
Hang on, Magwitch lost the eyepatch. Huh?
The whole rowing plan happens after he got burned. That makes it entirely
stupid.
And the whole thing they're making a speech of is just... Doesn't fit as a
speech, really don't. Why not just do showing?
You know what they also skipped? Pip using his expectations to fund Herbert in
work. That makes it so Pip never did *any* good thing with it. And that being
so, it can't be that it comes out well for him at the end.
I bet they have him snuggly with Estella. Blah.
Huh, him and Herbert shake hands goodbye teh buoy puts bars between them.
Interesting.
Pip dives in and gets all heroic pulling Magwitch out the way of the paddle
wheel.
Pity that makes him not injured, logically.
"If he had a child, the money would go to the child"
Ah! Now I can see how they get a redeeming moment out of it. Trying to get
Estella money!
... Hang on, if he's also still set on marrying her, that don't look right at
all.
Oh, bugger, now the lawyer is doing all the telling, and Pip didn't figure
anything out at all.
I tell you, if this were the only version I'd seen, I'd wonder why Pip was even
in it, let alone the protagonist. What does he do? Bugger all.
... And the 'put the case' leads up to justifying Jaggers giving the child for
adoption.
How does Pip conclude she should never be told?
Why is it up to Jaggers to point out she has a claim to property?
Bloody useless mess this is.
Oh look, he's dying now for no readily apparent reason.
So there's the deathbed thingy, "And I love her"
and then convict kisses Pip's hand
the same way Pip kissed Miss H's hand when he thought her his benefactor.
And now he's dead.
And now Pip keels over. Bit unexpected, all things considered.
And it actually is Joe looks after him when he wakes. All the other bits of Joe
they took out I was wondering.
Oh wonderful, no subtitles.
Where did Herbert go? He isn't home, he isn't in teh story since the bit in the
boat.
Did he drown?
Joe brought Pip home? ??? ? ? But the point was he never did.
And now he's congratulating them on their marriage... That fits far less well
when they've been living together with no reason for so very long.
And now he's wandering around an empty house. Well that ain't right neither,
even if it does give him flashback voice. The point of the misty ending was the
old was all wrecked and that made space for the new. Whatever ending could fit
in this would be completely mausoleum trapped.
"I have no husband Pip"
"When MR Jaggers disclosed to Bentley Drummle my true parentage, he no longer
wished to have me for a wife."
... This changes the ideological basis of the ending immensely.
"I've now no need to sell the house. It is mine and I shall live here. I shall
like it here Pip, away from teh world and all its complications."
And he sees the bible exactly like Ms Havisham left it.
And now Pip is trying to get Estella to leave and Estella is fighting to stay!
What the flying fuck?!
"I have come back, to let in the sunlight!"
Pip breaks down the shutters, and oh look Estella is all changed!
If I thought the book was difficult to read feminist, see what the film does to
Estella - not a moment of agency of her own whatsoever.
"You're part of my existence, part of myself" says Pip. Like he ate her!
And now he's all "Look at me" And oh dear there's going to be a kiss. Oh good, a hug, phew.
"We belong to each other, let's start again, together"
And they run off out the gate together..
Okay, I think I really *hate* that version. I mean it was bad enough in the book, but at least there was some doubt about it. Now it makes it all about the 'romance', all about Pip, and... *shudders*
Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
... I have definite opinions on this.
So, anyways, I watched it.
Glad I waited until I'd finished reading.
I quite like the book. But the film was terrible.