The Man Who Invented Christmas
Cert PG; Now showing
What better way to begin December than with a film about The Man Who Invented Christmas. Director Bharat Nalluri’s version of Susan Coyne’s screenplay focuses on the six weeks it took Charles Dickens to write A Christmas Carol. It is festive, enjoyable and has appeal for everyone, bar very young children. It was also partly shot in Dublin.
The film opens with Dickens’s (Dan Stevens) successful tour of the US in 1842. It moves then to a year later when, after a series of less successful books, and with a fifth child on the way and bills to pay, he scrabbles around for inspiration.
His as yet vague idea about a Yule-themed book leaves his publishers cold as Christmas is not yet much of a celebration, so Dickens decides to self-publish. He has just six weeks in which to write the novella, have it illustrated and publish, six weeks in an already busy life.
The film gives some interesting biographical insights into Dickens’s background, especially regarding his father John (Jonathan Pryce).
It shows the writer himself to be full of contradictions, he was fun and charming but could be irascible when writing, he had a social conscience but had social ambition.
Dickens gets inspiration from life including young Northern Irish maid Tara (Anna Murphy). The characters also appear to Dickens as he writes and in this way A Christmas Carol is retold without being rehashed. This works well.
What works less well is the linking of Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) and Dickens’s redemption.
Fast paced, occasionally bordering on manic, there are lots of interesting details and characters like writer Thackeray (Miles Jupp) relishing his rival’s bad reviews. It’s simple, nice and very enjoyable.