Starring Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast) as Charles Dickens, THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS tells the true story of how the iconic author came to write the seminal yuletide novel A Christmas Carol in only six weeks.
Synopsis
Set in 1840s London, Dickens had been struggling to come up with fresh ideas after the failure of his last three works. However, when he’s inspired by the vision of a story that would fire the hearts of humanity, he set out to write and self-publish a book that would reignite his career.
As the likes of Ebenezer Scrooge (played by Academy Award-winner Christopher Plummer, The Sound of Music) and The Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future start coming to life in his head, Dickens began to write a masterpiece that gave birth to the Christmas we know and love today.
Review – Contains Spoilers
If you love A Christmas Carol you are going to love this film too! It is, after all, Charles Dickens.
The film follows Charles’s struggles after the failure of his latest books, and just be watching the world around him Ebenezer Scrooge is born.
Charles struggled as a child with being thrown into the workhouse when his father was sent to debtors Jail. This giving a resemblance to Oliver Twist. His last successful book. But he is told that the poor have no place in books! A term he finds unacceptable and shall write about them all the same!
Throughout the film, you see references to a Christmas Carol. How Jacob Marley got his name, the offices to which Scrooge will work, and the poorly Tiny Tim. But within Charles is Scrooge. For when he writes the story, he doesn’t plan to make Scrooge change his ways and Tiny Tim remains dead.
When challenged by both his best friend and his maid who he read the story to, that he can not leave it that Tiny Tim remains dead, he can not see why not.
He cannot see why or how Scrooge would ever change just by the visiting of ghosts, and it is, in fact, a trip back to the Workhouse [with Scrooge in his head] that makes him realise that he is not his past, and he too can change his ways and thus the ending to A Christmas Carol is born.
And as we all know, to this day remains a very successful Christmas Ghost Story!
Rachael Jess
Comedy, Drama | UK, 2017 | PG | Thunderbird Releasing | DVD + Blu-Ray | Dir. Bharat Nalluri | Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Simon Callow, Miriam Margolyes
