Watching this excellent subtle film develop provides an antidote to the standard wham bam don't bore the audience movies, the ones that get all the attention. This is gorgeous to look at, and it is thoughtful and fascinating for Dickens enthusiasts. Yes, it does take its time; it does challenge an audience to pay attention. It reveals another aspect to Charles Dickens genius, and it does so without adjusting our pleasure in the extraordinary books he wrote. To give ten stars is partly political, because this film does not merit an absolute score. But it gets its ten because others have rated it too low. The evocation of an 'early modern' life is beautifully suggested. The excellence of Claire Tomalin's fascinating book, on which the film is based, is only broadly sketched. The film would need to be a long running series to adequately explore and contain the book's riches. Fiennes has taken a broad brush because he has to. If it stimulates an audience to explore further then the book will flesh out some of the questions that remain hidden in the film. The real person that was Charles Dickens cannot be fully comprehended in a book or a film about him, but his energetic complexity and his constant invention of other lives is revealed in both. Neither the film or the book moralises or attempts to blame; what we see and read about is complex, and aspects of a very great writer are understood and revealed.