Several years ago, I saw a reproduction of one of Mervyn Peake's illustrated manuscript pages for Titus Groan . The writing was squashed to the side by a large pencil drawing of a boy and a girl. I hate the sort of ghost story where the ghost turns out to be curtains but despite the Gothic trappings in these novels, I like their avoidance of the supernatural, because real discipline is needed to maintain atmosphere. The active camerawork suggests both the vivid individualism of these characters and the ways in which they are all rendered tiny and inconsequential by the sheer weight of Gormenghast Castle and all its trappings. This is a brighter world than Peake's novels suggest, but those novels have the precise attention to colour you'd expect from a painter, and the design of this film amplifies that sense.
People speak in a modern way while performing ancient rituals.
The acting is terrific. One of the great strengths of this adaptation is that the actors mostly do overact and yet manage to find the note of humanity in their characters. Peake reveals more about his characters through their thoughts than their actions. These nuances allow us to realize how perceptively Peake drew these characters in the first place. Maybe Gertrude retreats to her cats and birds not because she resents her children, but as a way of diverting her sentiments from them, since they belong to Gormenghast and the Line more than to her.