The Man Who Invented Christmas: Clever take on a holiday chesnut

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) • View trailer 
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.

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.

Love & Friendship: Witty and delightful

Love & Friendship (2016) • View trailer 
4 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

I wonder if late 18th century aristocrats actually were so unswervingly polite with each other, or whether that’s an affectation we’ve grown to expect from Jane Austen stories.

Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) has designs on the much younger Reginald
DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel), a potential match that horrifies his sister and their parents.
Lady Susan couldn't care less about their objections, so the question remains: Can
anything save the poor lad from this black widow's clutches?

Whatever the actual truth, dramatic adaptations of Austen’s tales always are a treat, in great part because of the diabolically deceptive manner in which characters cut each other dead, with such cleverly scathing turns of phrase ... always delivered quietly, with a disarming smile that leaves the victim in stunned silence.

Director/scripter Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship has many such delectable moments, with plenty of tart dialog exchanged between the various good-hearted characters who do their best to survive encounters with the predatory schemer in their midst. The film is based on a lesser-known Austen work: the epistolary novella Lady Susan, likely written in the 1790s, before any of her published longer works, and then withheld. It remained unseen for half a century after her death, until a nephew published it in 1871.

Aside from its relative brevity, Lady Susan differs from Austen’s “classic” works — most notably Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma — in that its “heroine” is neither honorable nor admirable. Lady Susan Vernon is selfish, conniving and utterly ruthless, caring not a whit for the bruised or shattered feelings of those left in her wake.

In short, she’s a monster.

And yet, as played here to saucy, unapologetically haughty perfection by Kate Beckinsale, she’s utterly irresistible.

From a safe distance.

The saga begins as the recently widowed Lady Susan flees a scandal, choosing to “hide out” at Churchill, the estate of her in-laws, Charles Vernon (Justin Edwards) and his wife, Catherine DeCourcy Vernon (Emma Greenwell). Charles is magnanimous, by nature believing the best in everybody; Catherine is wary, recalling how her marriage was so vociferously opposed by Lady Susan.

Still, Lady Susan now appears chastened and friendly; Catherine cautiously hopes for the best.

She should have gone with her first instinct.