The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
The journey that led to Charles Dickens' creation of
"A Christmas Carol," a timeless tale that would redefine the holiday.
Director:
Bharat NalluriStars:
The Man Who Invented Christmas tells of the magical journey that led to the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer), Tiny Tim and other classic characters from "A Christmas Carol." Directed by Bharat Nalluri (MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY), the film shows how Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) mixed real life inspirations with his vivid imagination to conjure up unforgettable characters and a timeless tale, forever changing the holiday season into the celebration we know today.
Language:
EnglishRelease Date:
22 November 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Dickens: L'uomo che inventò il Natale See more »Company Credits
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Trivia
Donald Sumpter (who portrays Jacob Marley in the film) has appeared in
two other adaptations of a Charles Dickens story: Great Expectations
(1999) and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001).
Having seen pretty much all of the key cinematic depictions of the immortal Charles Dickens
story “A Christmas Carol” over the years, I can honestly say that I
could go the rest of my life without seeing another permutation of the
tale. That feeling was again reinforced after watching “The Man Who
Invented Christmas,” a saccharine stab at a new holiday perennial that
tries to fuse the classic Yuletide yarn with a “Shakespeare In
Love”-style literary origin story and manages to let both of them down,
not to mention a performance by Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge that deserves a much better showcase than the one provided here.
The year is 1843 and Dickens (Dan Stevens)
is in a commercial slump—his previous three novels have found little
favor with the buying public—and he is in need of money in order to help
support himself, his loyal wife Catherine (Morfydd Clark),
their four children (with a fifth on the way) and an expensive home
renovation. While casting about for ideas for a new book, he takes
inspiration from his new maid (Anna Murphy), whose literary tastes are
of a somewhat lurid bent (she is a big “Varney the Vampire” fan), and
who mentions to him a folk tale about mysterious spirits being revived
at Christmastime. This sparks something in Dickens and he decides that
he will write and self-publish his own holiday-themed ghost story in
time for Christmas as a way of replenishing his coffers. There is one
little hitch to this endeavor—Christmas is about six weeks away and to
miss that immovable deadline would be disastrous.
This might seem
to be an impossible task to pull off, especially since he will be
attempting to work in a house filled with children, workmen and the
unexpected presence of his cheerful but constantly broke father (Jonathan Pryce).
Luckily for Dickens, everywhere he goes in London offers him some
nugget that he channels into his work, ranging from a lame nephew to an
ancient waiter at his club with the delightful name of Marley. The real
burst of inspiration comes when Dickens happens upon the evening burial
of a man attended only by his aging and apparently heartless business
partner (Plummer), who immediately becomes the model for Scrooge
himself, especially his constant uttering of “Humbug.” While trying to
work the story out from the confines of his study, Dickens finds himself
interacting with the characters he has created as he tries to work out
what happens to them. The story soon becomes a race against time as
Dickens tries to resolve the ending of the book (he seems very keen on
Tiny Tim dying) and get the manuscript to the publisher in time before
it is too late while at the same time confronting the still-lingering
after-effects of his father’s lifetime of financial irresponsibility in
the hopes of reconciling with him before it too is too late.
Based on a non-fiction book of the same name by Les Standiford, “The Man Who Invented Christmas” has been adapted by screenwriter Susan Coyne and director Bharat Nalluri
into the kind of hard-sell holiday whimsy that may appeal to those who
wish that more places would start playing Christmas carols before
Halloween while at the same time driving others up the wall. The notion
of watching Dickens create his most everlasting work sounds intriguing
in theory but the execution here is more off-putting than delightful.
Not particularly keen on nuance or subtlety, this is a film in which
everything, especially Stevens’ decidedly manic take on Dickens, is
pitched as broadly as possible. An even bigger problem with the film is
the way in which it handles its presentation of the creative process.
Granted, watching someone sitting at a table and scratching away with a
pen while working out story problems does not exactly make for great
cinema, but the solution to that obstacle—having him constantly
pilfering characters, ideas and even chunks of dialogue from his forays
into the real world—feels like a cheat and does an enormous disservice
to one of literature’s great imaginations. “Shakespeare in Love”
was not exactly a realistic depiction of the writing process either but
it feels like cinema verite when compared to what is depicted here.
The one aspect of “The Man Who Invented Christmas” that does work
well is the striking turn by Christopher Plummer as the film’s ersatz
Scrooge. Of course, Plummer is one of those actors who seems virtually
incapable of turning in a bad performance, but his work here is really
strong. Scrooge is, of course, a role that seems tailor-made for hamming
it up, but Plummer instead takes a quieter and more delicate approach
that stands in marked contrast to the rest of the film, and is all the
more effective as a result. He is acerbically funny in his interactions
with his creator but also manages to inject a few moments of genuine
pathos into the proceedings as well, a feat all the more considerable
since he is playing an overtly fictional character. You know, I would
like to partially walk back what I said earlier and state that if
someone were inspired by this film to cast Plummer in a straightforward
version of “A Christmas Carol,” I would actually be interested in seeing
such a thing. Until then, we will have to make do with his appearance
here, which stands out like a delightful sugar plum in the middle of an
otherwise stale cake.
FINAL RATING: 5/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 5/10 OVERALL.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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