Dickens and his guidance counselors.
Whether fictionalized or not, The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) gives its audience a peek into the chaos that may have been Charles Dickens, and in particular the act of creation which brought his classic Christmas story into being.
Our story begins with the sources of tension in Dickens’ life: two failures after the phenomenal success of Oliver Twist, a fifth child on the way, a new house, expensive tastes, financial strains, and finally a father whose limitations distress Dickens. And no book incipient, a key problem when his publishers insist on the repayment of a loan necessitated by the failures of his last two books.
But when those publishers apply their business acumen to his spur of the moment book proposal and spurn it, he impulsively decides to publish the book on his own dime, complete with illustrations – and only six weeks left to complete the non-existent manuscript, get the illustrations and all to the independent publisher, and onward to the shops. Thus would seem to be the tale to be told.
But it’s not, really. The story is not the race from nothing to something, but concerns his own form of authorial semi-insanity which comes from vivid characters beginning to populate his mind, characters who talk to him when he’s stuck, feed him his story – and then refuse his demands when the story he wishes to impose on them doesn’t meet with their approval.
When your fictional characters fight back, you have an insurrection on your hands.
And Charles doesn’t handle it all that well, subjecting himself, his friends, and family to mercurial moods which may alienate those who love him best. Some parts of constructing a new story are fairly mundane, although I do not mean mechanical or easy: the gathering of names for characters, locations, and ideas. But the harder parts of great stories come from staring at the very pillars of society, strong or crumbling, obvious or hidden. Dickens may be wealthy, or keeps up a good front, but right in front of him are the dregs of society, the children living in abject poverty, abused by parents and others for ends which leave the children in miserable places. And the best stories come from the insights the author believes they see – such as the attention paid to wealth in Dickens’ London society, over that attention that should be paid to friendship and uplifting the poor of society.
And that’s what this movie works hard to lay bare, for Dickens is hardly without fault himself. He virtually despises his own well-meaning father, a man beset with his own demons and deficiencies. And while I empathize with the problems caused by interruptions of the creative process, firing a maid for the conveyance of a message is hardly the act of a just employer; his failure to manage his time is used to put a metaphorical arrow through the poor woman. So when Scrooge himself laughs at his own author and proclaims no one ever changes, it’s the challenge for Dickens, not only in his story upon which he’s laid so much hope, but for his own life.
As a meta-story it works fairly well. The acting is excellent, I enjoyed the cinematography and sets, and if it sometimes feels like Dickens dominates the movie, what did I expect? I’ll admit I have a poor ear for London accents, so I occasionally lost bits of dialog, but I and the audience clapped at the end. Go and have a good time.
