3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang
This is a droll bit of seasonal
mischief.
Les Standiford’s scholarly,
quasi-biography of Charles Dickens — 2008’s The
Man Who Invented Christmas — seems an unlikely source for a mainstream,
holiday-themed film; scripter Susan Coyne deserves credit for an unusual (if
hardly original) approach.
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| As Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens, seated) struggles to work his way through the five "staves" of his new book, he's helped — and hindered — by his imagined personification of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer). |
The result proceeds briskly under
the capable guidance of British film and TV director Bharat Nalluri, perhaps
best known on these shores for 2008’s charming Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Nalluri and Coyne similarly
concentrate on whimsical character dynamics here, presenting us with a
31-year-old Dickens — played with agreeably feverish anxiety by Dan Stevens —
beset by all manner of troubles.
The film begins with a brief
prologue in 1842, with Dickens celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic, his
stage readings standing-room-only sell-outs in the wake of his wildly popular
novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop. Flash-forward a
year and change, and Dickens is in dire financial straits after three published
flops, including — most particularly — the unloved Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dickens is at wit’s end: unable
to pay the craftsmen appointing his luxurious new home; forever harried by his
spendthrift father (Jonathan Pryce, as John Dickens); and newly panicked by the
news that his wife Kate (Morfydd Clark) is expecting their fifth child. Worse
yet, he’s months into a ferocious case of writer’s block, the public disdain
for his recent output having paralyzed his creative juices.
Best friend and sorta-kinda agent
John Forster (Justin Edwards) isn’t much help, his advice limited to little
beyond “Well, just write another book.” Dickens’ publishers — Chapman (Ian
McNeice) and Hall (David McSavage) — are similarly useless: actually worse than
useless, when they reject the pitch for his next book.
They hardly can be blamed, as
it’s a crazed notion: a vaguely defined story about Christmas. Nobody writes about Christmas; nobody cares about Christmas. As the boorish
husband of one of Dickens’ aristocratic readers sniffs, Christmas is “just an
excuse to pick a man’s pocket once a year.”
If that line sounds familiar,
you’ve recognized one key element in Coyne’s script.
The narrative conceit here is
that Dickens overhears and jots down names, comments and possible plot
contrivances from family, friends and random strangers. (Young Irish housemaid
Tara — winningly played by Anna Murphy — helps him come up with the name
“Scrooge.”) It’s a delightful notion, particularly for those well-versed in A Christmas Carol’s characters and
quotable lines.
