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The Man Who Invented Christmas
Dec. 14th, 2017 11:49 amIt's been a very Christmas-y December for me. So far, there have been two holiday parties, White Christmas at the ArtCraft (I've seen that movie quite a few times already, but it's impossible to turn it down!), and also The Man Who Invented Christmas, which stars Dan Stevens (who played Matthew in Downton Abbey) as Charles Dickens in the throes of composing A Christmas Carol in a desperate bid to save himself from bankruptcy.
An excellent movie. I’ve come to have strong feelings on How to Make a Good Biopic, and I think it almost always works better to focus on a particular episode in the subject’s life rather than try to cram the whole thing in. The writing of A Christmas Carol is a particularly inspired choice - it’s not only Dickens’ most famous work, but it also encapsulates a lot of his most important themes, both in writing and in life.
He’s writing the book to save his family from debt - which was the scourge that destroyed his own childhood, back in the day (which is presented through a few well-done flashbacks), after his charming but deeply feckless father lost all his money. And it’s clear that the elder Dickens hasn’t changed a bit, which adds a certain urgency to the theme that is also prevalent in A Christmas Carol: “Can people change?”
Now, A Christmas Carol and The Man Who Invented Christmas offer different answers to this question: A Christmas Carol says “Yes!” where The Man Who Invented Christmas tends toward “No.” John Dickens remained feckless to the end of his life (making pocket money by selling his son’s signature, for instance, after cutting it off of papers that he dug out of dustbins); Charles was and would remain a difficult person to live with, which would eventually destroy his marriage and prompt one of his daughters to make a very unsuitable marriage just to get out of her unhappy childhood home.
This difference does make the movie strained at points - it doesn’t feel entirely earned when Charles allows himself to redeem Scrooge. (They gesture toward the idea that in redeeming Scrooge, Charles is holding out hope to himself that he will one day overcome his own demons, but they don’t quite nail it.)
The movie has it’s darker side: there’s a particularly brutal scene where Charles verbally shreds his father, who weeps. But there are also some wonderful funny bits, especially all the scenes with Thackeray, who loves to quote the most recent bad reviews of Dickens' work to him, under guise of sympathizing, of course.
And, in appropriate homage to its source and inspiration, the movie ends on a happy and hopeful note. A Christmas Carol is an enormous success, and Charles achieves a temporary rapprochement with his father. The family is all together for the holiday, unified and joyful, and we end on a Christmas toast.
An excellent movie. I’ve come to have strong feelings on How to Make a Good Biopic, and I think it almost always works better to focus on a particular episode in the subject’s life rather than try to cram the whole thing in. The writing of A Christmas Carol is a particularly inspired choice - it’s not only Dickens’ most famous work, but it also encapsulates a lot of his most important themes, both in writing and in life.
He’s writing the book to save his family from debt - which was the scourge that destroyed his own childhood, back in the day (which is presented through a few well-done flashbacks), after his charming but deeply feckless father lost all his money. And it’s clear that the elder Dickens hasn’t changed a bit, which adds a certain urgency to the theme that is also prevalent in A Christmas Carol: “Can people change?”
Now, A Christmas Carol and The Man Who Invented Christmas offer different answers to this question: A Christmas Carol says “Yes!” where The Man Who Invented Christmas tends toward “No.” John Dickens remained feckless to the end of his life (making pocket money by selling his son’s signature, for instance, after cutting it off of papers that he dug out of dustbins); Charles was and would remain a difficult person to live with, which would eventually destroy his marriage and prompt one of his daughters to make a very unsuitable marriage just to get out of her unhappy childhood home.
This difference does make the movie strained at points - it doesn’t feel entirely earned when Charles allows himself to redeem Scrooge. (They gesture toward the idea that in redeeming Scrooge, Charles is holding out hope to himself that he will one day overcome his own demons, but they don’t quite nail it.)
The movie has it’s darker side: there’s a particularly brutal scene where Charles verbally shreds his father, who weeps. But there are also some wonderful funny bits, especially all the scenes with Thackeray, who loves to quote the most recent bad reviews of Dickens' work to him, under guise of sympathizing, of course.
And, in appropriate homage to its source and inspiration, the movie ends on a happy and hopeful note. A Christmas Carol is an enormous success, and Charles achieves a temporary rapprochement with his father. The family is all together for the holiday, unified and joyful, and we end on a Christmas toast.
