Other Media Review

Guest Review: The Man Who Invented Christmas

This guest review comes from Rhoda Baxter! If you’re looking to get cozy and into some holiday spirit, The Man Who Invented Christmas is a great movie suggestion.

Rhoda writes contemporary romantic comedies about smart women and nice guy heroes. She also writes multicultural women’s fiction as Jeevani Charika. Her latest Christmas novella is Snowed In. Rhoda can be found on her website or on Twitter (@rhodabaxter).

It’s October, which means it’s time for the Christmas novellas to start coming out. I love a good Christmas novella – I pile them up on my Kindle and then binge read one a day from Boxing Day until mid January. They let me keep hold of that festive feeling in the dark, dark months before spring. The book that started it all was, of course, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. So, when I saw that The Man Who Invented Christmas was on Netflix, I had to watch it. I expected it to be amusing, maybe whimsical… and it had Dan Stevens in it. What I didn’t expect was to love it quite as much as I did.

The story follows Charles Dickens who, after his massive success with Oliver Twist, had three flops in a row. He’s fast running out of money and his publishers are running out of confidence. In a fit of desperation, he says he will write a Christmas book. In six weeks. It’d be funny and uplifting. The publisher is sceptical that he can write anything that fast. Also, who would buy it: ‘Not much of a market for Christmas books, what?’

Eventually, Dickens decides to fund it himself, so strongly does he believe in it. He has to go even further into debt to do so.

What makes this film so great isn’t so much the plot – although it’s good – but the way it depicts an author’s life. Given that all films are written by actual writers, very few of them show what it’s like to be a writer with any kind of accuracy. This film nails it. Here are some examples:

  • While he’s in between books, Dickens starts to worry that he’s forgotten how to write. The raw terror on his face when he tells Forster, his friend and sort-of-agent, is so familiar. Most writers I know go through this ‘oh my goodness, I’ll never be able to do it again’ feeling.
  • He has to find his characters before he can write the story. The scenes where he’s stalking around the room, trying out different sounds until he hits upon the right name for Scrooge or the right word to describe something is brilliant and very true to life.

    Scene gifs!

    A young Dickens trying to figure out the name for Scrooge. He starts with Scrunge.A young Dickens getting frustrated during his writing process. Mr. Scrooge, the character, finally reveals himself to Charles Dickens.
  • Words, phrases, names and images all get stored away in his magpie brain so that he can use them later. This works in the film because we know A Christmas Carol so well that we recognise phrases like ‘an excuse to pick a man’s pocket every twenty fifth of December’ instantly. Dickens, of course, is hearing them for the first time.
  • You see the way the story comes together… or doesn’t come together. My absolute favourite part was when his characters followed him around, standing across the road when he went for lunch, lounging around in his study, getting in the way. They were always there, chatting, nagging, heckling, but they refused to do the one thing he wanted – they wouldn’t tell him how the story ended. To work that out, Dickens had to face his own demons from his past and from his relationship with his father. The redemption of Scrooge is inextricably tied with Dickens’s own ability to forgive.
  • At first, Dickens believed that Tiny Tim should die. Everyone he tells the story to begs him to let Tiny Tim live. In the end, he relents. Thank goodness.
  • Right through the production of the book, Dickens has such a strong vision of his little volume that he dictates every last detail – the engravings, the binding, the colouring, everything is incredibly specific. The look on his face when he unwraps his first copy of the book is wonderful. He had tears in his eyes and so did I.

Of course, Dickens is a man, so he doesn’t have to worry about his growing family or keeping the house running. He does seem fond of his ‘little strangers’, but it’s quite clear that it’s his wife’s job to look after all that. Not all writers have that luxury!

The story itself is about one man’s belief in his art and how it paid off. It’s also about how his past shaped him. All authors should watch it. Better still, get your significant other to watch it so that you can say ‘that’s how it feels’. At the very least they’ll get to see that when you’re apparently procrastinating, you’re actually working (no, really). Who knows, they even might understand what drives you!

By the end of the film, I felt like I’d seen part of myself on screen. As a film in and of itself, it had charm and wit and a stellar cast. Quite apart from the loveliness that is Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer made a wonderfully creepy Scrooge. I enjoyed it enough to watch it twice!

We all know now that A Christmas Carol changed the Christmas market for books. There are so many stories about the holiday released in print and on screen every year now, that it’s hard to imagine a time when there weren’t.

Not much of a market for Christmas books? Bah. Humbug.

Add Your Comment →

  1. Laurel says:

    Just in case anyone else is looking for it: I couldn’t find this movie on Netflix here in the US, but it was available to watch on Amazon Prime.

  2. chacha1 says:

    I really enjoyed the book, so I’m sure I’ll like the movie too. Christopher Plummer is a MAJOR BONUS.

Add Your Comment

Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

↑ Back to Top