Tag: charles dickens

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD – Review

As the temps show little signs of cooling (and Fall’s less than four weeks away), another way to pass the hours in the “great indoors” (a very familiar locale for the last five months or so) is to scoop up a beloved literary classic, blow the dust off, and dive right in to revisit another faraway time. Or, for those more adventurous folk, head down to the just reopened movie theatres for the latest big-screen adaptation. Yes, this work has inspired countless artists over its 170 plus years’ history. One such writer/filmmaker, who’s been quite the award magnet in televised media over the last couple of decades, has decided to put his “spin” on this classic to both honor the original tome and breathe “new life” into it for today’s movie audiences. That may account for his “addition” to the title (which had been just the main character’s moniker in most editions), THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD.

This “history” actually starts with the adult David (Dev Patel) using a slide projector to take an appreciative theatre audience back to the time of his birth. Recent widow Clara Copperfield (Morfydd Clark) is briefly distracted from excruciating labor by the whirlwind arrival of her dotty aunt Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton), who just as quickly departs upon learning of the infant’s gender (she was counting on a girl). Fortunately, mother and her servant Pegotty (Daisy May Cooper) dote on the infant. Things get much more complicated when Clara marries the humorless Mr. Murdstone (Darren Boyd) who brings along his equally unpleasant sister Jane (Gwendoline Christie). Luckily little David (Ranveer Jaiswal) is taken on a holiday with Pegotty to visit her brother Daniel (Paul Whitehouse) who works the docks with his adopted kids Ham (Anthony Welsh) and sweet Emily (Aimee Kelly). A big plus, they all live in an old beached boat. Life isn’t as fun when David returns home to the teaching and vicious punishments of Murdstone, who promptly sends him off to London to toil as a wine-bottler. Here too, he gets a taste of happy home life when he is sent to live with the poor, but fun Mr. Micawber (Peter Capaldi) and his raucous large clan. It all comes to an end when the Murdochs arrive to inform David (now Patel) of his mother’s passing. Distraught with rage he somehow walks to his Aunt Betsey’s estate. She welcomes him and he soon becomes good friends with their distant relative, the eccentric but sensible Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie). But he must continue his education, so Betsey enrolls him in a boys prep school run by the tipsy Mr. Wickfield (Benedict Wong) and his good-hearted daughter Agnes (Rosalind Eleazar). There David makes friends with both the rich, cocky Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard), and the school’s strange, self-deprecating custodian Uriah Heep (Ben Whishaw). As David matures he falls in love with Dora (Ms. Clark again), thwarts a financial crime, and pursues his dream of writing a great novel.

As you see, the film follows HAMILTON with its “color-blind” casting, using actors of many different ethnicities and races to interpret the classic roles. With that, we’re treated to a most passionate performance by Patel as the lead. He utilizes his superb comic skills along with a lanky physicality, often recalling the great silent film clowns. And when he falls in love, Patel does a full-on deep dive. Ditto for his “mini-me”, the endearing Jaiswall who behaves as though every place is a new part of “Wonderland”. The rest of Dickens’ classic characters are an actor’s dream, and this extraordinary cast makes them feel fresh and new. Swinton is a zany whirlwind as Betsey, from chasing away the dreaded donkeys from her land (she knocks riders to the ground) to distracting Wickfield away from her well-stocked globe full of booze. She’s got a great “dancing partner’ in the deliciously loopy Laurie who rambles about Charles the First while toting a big cumbersome kite (his work is reminiscent of his many roles on the various incarnation of TV’s “Blackadder”). Perhaps the most endearing Dickens creation may be Micawber who is played with charm to spare by the buoyant Capaldi (the last of the male Who doctors) as a doting dad and lovable rascal always short of cash but towering with heart. On the subject of great comic turns, kudos to Clark who steals so many scenes as the completely daffy Dora (talking through her pup Jip), after pulling on our heartstrings as the loving but doomed Clara. The film’s most subtle but compelling standout might be Whishaw whose bowing manner and Moe Howard hairstyle hide a truly devilishly devious mastermind. Whishaw’s odd demeanor and swirling beady eyes inject an off-kilter menace to even a friendly snack of “heavy” cake.

Oh, the award-winning creative force behind this? None other than Armando Iannucci, who we’ve not seen on the big screen since 2017’s THE DEATH OF STALIN, though he’s been very busy at HBO finishing up the political satire “Veep” and starting up the sci-fi spoof “Avenue 5”. With this adaptation he’s shaken up the story a bit, trimming some characters while fiddling with the plot mechanics in order to bring things to a most satisfying conclusion in just two hours’ time. Aside from starting with a flash-forward Iannucci has incorporated several startling cinematic devices, changing scenes using some CGI trickery, often bulldozing the “fourth wall” to have David address us and his own child- self, and tossing in some narrative bits right from Broadway (at one point the actors’ backdrop is replaced by a projected sequence). As with his past works, Ianucci relies on rapid-fire dialogue (he co-wrote the script with Simon Blackwell) dropping gags with precision accuracy, but he also displays a terrific knack for choreographing wild bits of slapstick chaos, highlighted as Micawber’s home is under siege from creditors, their hands reaching through windows as they literally try to re-take the carpet right under his feet. And all the while he doesn’t short-change the drama and pathos of this man’s “history”. Add a sweeping score from Christopher Willis, dazzling cinematography from Zac Nicholson, plus costumes, art direction, and sets from artists and craftspeople at the “top of their game”, well, you’ve got a story from nearly two centuries ago that feels vibrant and alive, putting you right in the “moment”. THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD is an exceptional cinematic experience.


Three and a Half Out of Four

THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS – Review

Dan Stevens (left) stars as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer (right) stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in director Bharat Nalluri’s THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS, a Bleecker Street release. Photo credit: Kerry Brown / Bleecker Street ©

Dan Stevens gives a frenetic performance as Charles Dickens racing to finish writing “A Christmas Carol” in time to publish before the holiday, in THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS. Directed by Bharat Nalluri (MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY), this film has all the Christmas color and Victorian period costumes and sets you could want in a Christmas film. The film is mostly a clever way to retell the famous tale, as characters spring from the author’s imagination while he struggles with his own family issues and races to meet a pre-Christmas release deadline, but it also touches on how his short novel transformed a once-minor holiday into the tradition we know today.

People can hardly conceive the idea that Christmas was not always celebrated as the major holiday it is today, but before Dickens wrote his brief but moving Christmas tale, it was just another minor holiday on the English calendar, nowhere near as big as Easter. The change may have been afoot, with people in England starting to adopt the German tradition of a tannenbaum, a Christmas tree. There was also growing social awareness of, and public debate over, the plight of the poor in the Industrial Revolution, but Christmas was not yet a season of giving and kindness to the less-fortunate.

This story takes place at a low point in Charles Dickens’ (Dan Stevens) career, after his early success was followed by the publication of a few under-performing novels. Dickens is pressed for money, something he conceals from his well-meaning, neglected wife Kate (Morfydd Clark), and feels pressured to prove himself as an author as well, particularly to the irritating William Makepeace Thackeray (Miles Jupp). With the help of his loyal friend John Forster (Justin Edwards), Dickens hits on the idea of a Christmas-themed novel. But his publisher is not interested in a book about that little-celebrated holiday, so Dickens decides to publish the novel himself. That decision means he must not only write it but arrange the illustrations and printing as well as come up with the financing, all in time to release it before Christmas. To add to the pressure, Dickens ne’er-do-well father John (Jonathan Pryce) and mother (Ger Ryan) have turned up on his doorstep, out of cash and asking to stay with him, while the elder Dickens writes an article for a magazine for which he claims to have a contract.

This sets up not only a ticking-clock for Charles Dickens but all kinds of mayhem to beset the author as he struggles with his book and its characters. Dan Stevens gives us a hot-tempered, high-energy Dickens, who always seems on the edge of exploding as he battles writer’s block and rails against every interruption.

Colorful characters are a signature of Dickens’ novels, and one of this film’s delights is how it brings them to life wonderfully and weaves them into its tale. Dickens is taunted bitingly by Christopher Plummer’s Scrooge, glowered at by ghostly Marley (Donald Sumpter) and warmed by the jolly Spirit of Christmas Present, who looks just like his friend Forster. The author’s room fills with characters, and they follow and talk to the author as he wanders London streets seeking inspiration, or at least distraction from his writer’s block. At other more sober moments, Dickens relives the terrors of his childhood, remembering seeing his father sent to debtor’s prison and reliving the bullying he endured working as a child laborer in a boot-black factory.

 

Every writer who has struggled with writer’s block knows Dickens’ pain in that dilemma but the looming Christmas deadline makes it worse. If he does not publish before the holiday, the book won’t sell and his meager funds will he lost. While Dickens struggles to find his characters and his plot, his personal life intrudes, particularly his irritatingly irresponsible father. Jonathan Pryce is wonderful in the role of John Dickens, charming but cluelessly self-indulgent, begging money and them splurging on a new waistcoat, more a child than a parent to his son. Born a gentleman, the elder Dickens never was financially successful, and as his family fell into poverty, his son suffered from his poor money-handling. There is emotional potential in that but much of Dan Stevens’ performance is too one-note, sometimes bordering on hysterical, rather than a more subtle and deeper performance. However, the supporting cast tempers that by providing a little more nuance. Plummer’s Scrooge is particularly good in this respect, incorporating aspects of real people who Dickens encounters, such as a wealthy man who advocates debtors prisons (something Dickens family once experienced) or the miserly business partner of a man being buried at night in a dreary cemetery, who utters the famous “Bah, humbug.”

One might expect the socially-aware Dickens, who drew attention to the plight of the poor, and social ills like debtors prisons, and abusive orphanages, and wrote novels such as “Oliver Twist,” to identify with poor Bob Crachit. But the film draws parallels between the author and his villain Scrooge, played with verve by Christopher Plummer. Dickens had his darker side when it came to his own family (ever hear the phrase “the Dickens” meaning someone is an awful person? That refers to the author’s personal life) In this film, the focus is on Dickens’ dismissive attitude towards his wife and his impatience with his spend-thrift father, played wonderfully by Jonathan Pryce. The bits of Dickens’ personal life mostly serve as background for the developing novel, with a few references to some others of Dickens’ famous novels.

As a clever way to re-tell the perennial “A Christmas Carol,” THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS works pretty well. This polished period film is charming and entertaining for the most part, and delivers all the pretty Victorian Christmas imagery you could wish for. Bringing the story’s colorful characters to life to walk snowy London streets is a charming effect, as is illustrating how the author incorporated people he met into characters in the story. The characters trailing after Dickens, who they dismissively call “only the author,” provide a lot of fun, and the film sports delightful comic moments involving them. All the supporting cast is great, although Dan Stevens’ perpetually panicked Dickens wears on one after a time.

Where the film is less successful is in delivering what the title suggests, an insight into how Christmas came to be the holiday it is, and how it was regarded before Dickens’ novel transformed it. It was a minor holiday and people often didn’t even get the day off, certainly nothing like the biggest holiday of the year it is now, and it would have been nice to explore The holiday was how Christmas was regarded before and after his book was published, something only touched on superficially. The ways in which Dickens’s book changed Christmas are greater than people are often aware, the emphasis on “good will towards men” that we now associate with it, the idea of charity and giving, as well as the decorated tree, festive feast, family gathering, and even having the day off.

The film also falls short in painting a rounded portrait of Dickens himself, his complicated relationship with his father and wife, and his own character flaws. We get passing references and hints, about his difficult childhood and his neglect of his wife (something explored more fully in the 2013 film “Invisible Woman”) but little of that is fleshed out, explored or explained in this film.

As a holiday movie, THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS fits the bill, offering an inventive way to re-tell this beloved story, but it delivers less on the thing the title promises, insight on man behind the novel or on how is book “invented” the Christmas we know today.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (2013) – The Review

The-Invisible-Woman

From the title of the new film THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, movie goers may think they’re seeing yet another follow-up to the H.G. Wells inspired Universal monster classic THE INVISIBLE MAN, the James Whale film that was the debut of Claude Raines. After all, that studio did a flick by that title in 1940 that went for laughs instead of chills. But this new effort is not full of floating objects and bandaged menace. This is actually a biography of a person who was so regulated to the shadows that she was almost unseen. In telling her story we get another view of a  more celebrated historical figure, similar to what was done in W.C. FIELDS AND ME (1976) and 2000’s THIRTEEN DAYS (with Jack and Bobby Kennedy). This new film is the story of Ellen or Nelly Ternan and her clandestine relationship with the revered author Charles Dickens. Over 150 years ago, he was very close to being a media superstar, but now, thanks to director/star Ralph Fiennes, we get to see a more personal side of the man who gave the world so many timeless novels. Turns out his life was just as dramatic as any of his still-studied works of fiction.

We first meet Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) as she briskly walks along the seashore. She works at a nearby boys’ school where she directs the young men in a play based on a Dickens story. At a faculty reception after the performance, she states that she made the acquaintance of the celebrated author during her childhood. But a flashback reveals that she is not being completely honest. During her late teens Nelly was part of an acting family troupe along with her two sisters and managed by her ambitious mother Frances (Kristen Scott Thomas). A last-minute booking puts them in a production written by and starring the famous Charles Dickens (Fiennes). At a party after the play’s conclusion Dickens takes a personal interest in the reticent, shy young Nelly despite his long-standing marriage to Catherine (Joanna Scanlan), the mother of his ten children. Through the years he pursues her until he separates from his family (divorce was not a true option then) and lives with Nelly in France as his mistress under another name. Year later, in her new life at the school, Nelly is haunted by the past and fearful  that an inquisitive reverend will unearth her secret life.

Ms. Jones, so terrific in LIKE CRAZY, adds another great performance to her roster with the lead role of a conflicted, reluctant concubine. In the “modern time” framing sequences she attempts to be aloof and evasive while masking the heartbreak of her scandalous past. During the main bulk of the tale, Jones shows us how the shy young woman (odd, for an actress, but offstage she simply fades away) begins to speak up for herself as she realizes that she’s become the obsession of a powerful man. Nelly has a strong sense of propriety, but is moved by the devotion of the great author. And later, when her career stalls, she believes that this relationship is her only option. Fiennes presents a vibrant portrait of a nineteenth century “rock star” as he performs excerpts from his works to enthusiastic sell-out audiences (he’s mobbed when he’s spotted attending a horserace). Away from the footlights he still dazzles as the life of whatever party he attends, charming everyone in his wake. But there’s something about this fragile young lady. Perhaps she was a way of somehow recapturing his youth, of revisiting a simpler time before the fame. And the family. As the head of the family Joanna Scanlan is heartbreaking as a woman trying to hold on to her dignity while being publicly humiliated by the man to whom she has devoted her life. Catherine knows she must share his talent with the world, but still hopes that he will finally return home. A first glance she may seem dull and stodgy, but we witness her strength and nobility. She fell in love with the eloquent charmer long ago and understands Nelly’s attraction, but this compassion doesn’t ease her own pain. Scott Thomas is also compelling as the mother wanting all that’s best for her daughter, while realizing her choice will offer some security but little chance at true happiness.

Mr. Fiennes proves himself a fine director by not only assembling and guiding this gifted cast (himself included), but presenting a story that reflects life in all its shades of gray. No clearcut heroes and villains here. Particularly with Dickens himself. We see him work to raise funds for the down-trodden people living on the streets who inspired many of his characters (like Oliver Twist). It’s shocking that a man of such kindness can be so brutally cruel to the mother of his many children (he forces Catherine to hand deliver a birthday present to Nelly). The sets, costumes and scenery are superb, but Fiennes never lets the Victorian trappings overwhelm this personal story (we only see the aftermath of a horrific accident instead of CGI-enhanced destructive set-piece). THE INVISIBLE WOMAN not only gives us new insight of the celebrity who work is still regaled, but it presents a fairly contemporary struggle of a woman who finds the strength to not be defined by her past as she embarks on a better, brighter future.

4 Out of 5

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Plaza Frontenac Cinemas

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