"Most people remember David Lean for his big-scale epics, like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. But here he is at his most precise and poetic. Both movies are epics of the spirit, and both are plagued by grand, utterly magical moments and settings; whether showing Oliver’s mother straining and in pain, by intercutting with a flexing branch of thorns, or by lovingly lingering on Miss Havisham’s decaying splendor, Lean understand the need for hyperbole in order to manage the larger-than-life Dickensian archetypes. Some of the passages in both films skate the fine line between poetry and horror."

"This is a journey of a film, which ends where we couldn’t have imagined it would. A lesson in complexity, pain, fun, and beauty. Karen Black comes off as a worse actress than she is, and Jack Nicholson comes off as a better actor than he is. I think I saw this on VHS in the mid 1980s and then again at the Cinema Village in New York City in 1989. Throughout both viewings, but more so during the second time, I felt: grateful, grateful. This movie keeps on giving. A month or two ago I remembered the scene between Nicholson’s character and the mute father. I’m grateful for that."