Seen at the wonderful Star Cinema in Eaglehawk near Bendigo. This cinema is struggling financially, so we participated
in their “bums on seats” campaign, bringing ourselves and a friend.
Bea says: This was a great insight into Dickens, who, I realised I knew
very little about despite having studied his works exhaustively in my days as a
student of English literature.
I didn’t
know that A Christmas Carol was
written in only 6 weeks, under tremendous financial pressure following several
flops, and that the concern in all his books about the working conditions of
children in the Victorian era stemmed from his own childhood in a boot-blacking
factory after his family fell on hard times.
I knew that Christmas trees were something of a transplant from Germany,
brought over by Prince Albert, but not that Christmas as we know it today didn’t
really exist prior to this era.
A Christmas Carol
is rather overdone these days in terms of faithful reproductions of the story;
this was a fresh new take as it showed the story developing and growing and Dickens' always wonderful characters coming to be – a small exchange in the film also
shows how Dickens apparently got some of his characters’ names.
Above all – and we saw this on the 23rd December –
it was an uplifting reminder to (and no apologies for sounding cliched here) follow
one’s own dreams and path, and do good by others where and when you can. A great message to take into 2018 in these
somewhat dark times.
****
Cecil says: Like Bea, I was bowled over as much by the setting as the
film itself, with it being so close to Christmas and in an old hall that has
been converted into one of those cinemas with only sofas to sit in.
I also hadn’t realised that Dickens went through such a
tough patch, but had that almost Mozartian tendency to live above his means, only
to turn out another classic and get things back on an even keel – only Dickens,
we learnt, didn’t always produce best sellers and he was short of a bob or two
while writing a Christmas Carol.
I also enjoyed seeing how he picked up names for characters
along the way, though I already knew that from my tour of UK cathedrals, where
Portsmouth and Southwark gave him a few good names.
I kind of enjoyed the Thackeray character, who keeps popping
up like a bad penny to gloat over Dickens’ failings, having had lots of success
himself in America. I can’t help wondering if he was thrown in mainly for an
American audience since he is so much more popular and well-known over there.
It’d be nice to know what made the film producers bring him in – were there diary
entries they sourced from either Thackeray or Dickens himself?
I can’t quite give this film the four stars Bea has, though
the occasion overall – close to Christmas and in an independent cinema we hadn’t
been to before – is worth four. But for me, it’s
***.5
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