The frank, though decorous, eroticism of Gwyneth Paltrow's bare back, as admired by the adult Ethan Hawke, serves as a counterpoint to the movie's more Dickensian grotesques, with Anne Bancroft's monstrous Miss Havisham analogue leading the parade. But Robert De Niro's Magwitch figure is a complex creation masquerading as a craggy bogeyman, in keeping with the way the film consistently creates expectations and then tunnels underneath them.