2017's The Man Who Invented Christmas is a pleasant, wonderfully imaginative surprise. I go in expecting a dry, tedious Charles Dickens biopic but, as it turns out, it's a bloody jolly, illuminating treat.
As we've discovered, dear reader, the template for Dickens' undisputable classic 'A Christmas Carol' has proved itself amazingly durable over the years, lending itself to live action, animated, even Muppet form, while also inspiring a gazillion inferior rip-offs. Director Bharat Nalluri cleverly uses Dickens' novel as a framing device for the allegedly true tale of how the celebrated author came up with the ideas for Scrooge, Tiny Tim, those ghosts and more. So this is a film about inspiration but reads like a tall tale, feels very tongue-in-cheek and definitely should not be mistaken for a faithful biopic.
The film takes a few liberties in its charting of a six week period in the early 1840s where Dickens (Dan Stevens), under financial pressure to swiftly come up with a new book, frantically grasps for inspiration. We find the novelist, first glimpsed riding the wave of Oliver Twist's success, now struggling after three high-profile flops in a row The heat is on as Dickens, bereft of new ideas, looks for innovation in the lives of those around him. Fortuitously, his Irish maid Tara (Anna Murphy) introduces him to pulpy horror stories that get those creative juices flowing. Elsewhere, a fusty old waiter inspires the ghost of Jacob Marley, while a grumpy, spindly codger glimpsed in a cemetery (Christopher Plummer) provides the template for Mr Bah Humbug himself, Ebeneezer Scrooge.
I really like that the fictional characters themselves begin to take human form and appear to Charles in visions, sometimes helping him write, at other times grumpily chastising him for not being a good enough author. It's inventive and fun.
Plummer makes for a fantastic, frightening Scrooge while bringing the necessary hidden warmth to the character that was crucial to the story's runaway success. '...Carol' has endured, I believe, because it gives us all hope that even total bastards can be worthy of redemption and capable of good if they can see the error of their ways. Plummer's multifaceted but understated performance really encapsulates that here.
Credit too to Stevens who gives an entertaining physical, comedic turn as Dickens. So much of his performance comes from subtle expressions and wide-eyed looks that convey a man on the edge, close to falling in but battling to keep it together, grasping for inspiration at every turn. Early scenes where a manic Dickens verbally spars with his publishers and best mate Makepeace (Miles Jupp) are a humorous treat, as Stevens' face runs a whole gamut of emotions, going from cocky, to nervous to downright spooked, all while trying to kid everyone on that he knows what he's doing. Dickens’ biography comes across as one big hustle, trying to convince everyone to believe in him, while he battles with his own ‘ghosts’, trying to wrestle them into a shape resembling prose.
Telling a tale about Dickens’ life and struggles could have been heavy stuff but this film feels as light as tinsel and is a total hoot. The ‘Eureka!’ moment is a cliche of so many biopics but Nalluri’s film is very deliberately packed with loads of them, all done with a wink and a smile. In this somewhat silly but eminently satisfying tale, inspiration pops up from everywhere and anywhere and, from a poorly nephew, to a sinister doorknob, it all goes into the book, making the writing of a literary classic look like a piece of piss. Not taking itself too seriously, this is a movie less concerned with showing us the depressing struggles of a man with writer’s block than it is in keeping us very entertained. It works.
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