Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Man Who Invented Christmas

This is topic The Man Who Invented Christmas in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 12-20-2017, 06:13 PM:

This is a really different take on the A Christmas Carol story. Rather than simply telling the story we follow Charles Dickens as he goes through the process of writing it. And we get to see a good amount of 19th century London since that's where his inspiration comes from. The characters in the book are based on the people that he meets here and there around town as he goes about his life. After he incorporates his imaginary characters into the book, the characters start following him around and hanging around in his study when he's writing the book. He has debates and arguments with the characters, especially Scrooge, about the direction of the book, but anytime he gets interrupted (knock on the door, kids yelling in the house, etc) they all disappear and he loses his train of thought. It's an interesting angle to dramatize the creative process of writing a book.

The movie goes to some lengths to show you that life in 19th century London was pretty rough if you didn't have money and that was a good chunk of the inspiration for the book.

By the end of the movie they manage to dramatize most of the A Christmas Carol book in one way or another too, but that's not the main thrust of the movie since it's more about Charles Dickens and his personal situation and struggles.

A nice Christmas story and the sets and costumes all look great.

It's well worth seeing.