The Man Who Invented Christmas
It's Christmas movie season in my household! Christmas books I read all year round.
It takes me time to catch up with movies, and in the case of "The Man Who Invented Christmas," I'm oddly pleased that I did not discover it until this year (released in 2017). If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend watching. It's an adaptation of Charles Dickens's writing of A Christmas Carol. I know enough about Dickens to know that Hollywood made a few pieces of the story work for them rather than 100% follow history. Never mind that, though, because in my opinion, the movie was brilliant. Perhaps it is my fondness for Dickens's work, or perhaps because I missed Matthew on "Downton Abbey," but for whatever the reason I thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
What I really liked, other than the great cast, writing, and overall execution, was how they depicted the writing process. They made Mr. Dickens seem like a madman while he was working through the plot and writing the story.
If you're not a writer, you may simply see the entertainment value in it. If you are a writer, you may have related. I know I did.
When writing, the characters really do come alive in our imaginations. The are real to us. They frustrate us, don't always do what we want, and sometimes they make us giddy to the point where we can't wait to spend more time with them, at the expense of all else. Never have I seen that process so perfectly and visually captured as I did in this movie, with the characters standing alongside Dickens, driving him up and down on his emotional roller coaster.
I haven't researched quite enough to know if Dickens really suffered these experiences while writing A Christmas Carol, but I can certainly believe it happening on some level.
All of the history and screenplay dissection aside, "The Man Who Invented Christmas" is an enjoyable holiday movie.
Have you seen the movie? Did you like it, love it, or something else?
I haven't read the book of the same title yet, written by Les Standiford, but I plan to now. I like to compare movies based on books to see how much (and if) Hollywood altered the author's story.