The Dark Heart of A Christmas Carol (2019)
“Given the time again, I would not be myself.”
I was recently inclined to check out the FX and BBC production of A Christmas Carol that was released last year (directed by Nick Murphy and starring Guy Pearce, Andy Serkis, Joe Alwyn, and Vinette Robinson). As much as I love seeing different version of Charles Dickens’ classic story, there’s a cynical part of me that’s not fully allayed by the usual depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge’s journey- is he really changed at the end? How much has he changed? Is he going to continue to carry out his changed ways or just fall back in his old habits when the memories of his fateful night have faded? Maybe that stems from cynicism with society, it sure seems like there are more unchanged Scrooges than ever (Washington Post: America’s biggest companies flourished during the pandemic but put 100,000 out of work). And so I was heartened to see something that at least tries to offer a different, less sugarcoated view of the miser’s fateful night and the changes wrought thereof.
We follow the action through the gray and grimy streets of mid-nineteenth century London, beginning under the cold soil and going in and out of time and space thereafter, with a few familiar and unfamiliar sites along the way. It reminded me of the setting of a similarly-timed story I read earlier this year, The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, which also depicts a London that is transitioning into its place as a modern, global city, and the considerable problems that come with that designation- namely poverty, squalid, crowded living conditions, and pre-modern plumbing sanitation (aka no bueno). No wonder then that it’s a place with a considerable rift between its haves and have nots, of which Scrooge and his employee Bob Cratchitt are the avatars. Played as if he’s the personification of a wooden toothpick left in the freezer, Guy Pearce’s Scrooge embodies the wickedness of these times and seems as unlikely a candidate for redemption as there is. As Cratchitt, Joe Alwyn gives the character just the right amount of earnestness, steadfastness, and despair, he puts up with a lot of crap, but he’s also gonna stand up for himself. While discussing the holiday in the Scrooge and Marley Counting House on Christmas Eve, Cratchit realizes Christmas is the perfect container of everything Scrooge despises about the world, namely the possibility there might be some light, warmth and love out there that would pierce his heavily armored veneer. This is a man who demands his watch go faster so that he doesn’t have to leave work early, whose iconic “bah humbug” is said here with an icy disdain that makes it seem like he is disgusted he even has to say the expression.
Along the way of Scrooge’s transformation, we encounter the usual suspects, albeit with different flourishes. There is Ali Baba projecting out of his lost childhood imagination, his sister, whose crystal clear perception of the present world breaks down his mechanistic perspective on reality, this grungy, maudlin Father Christmas-type (a righteous Andy Serkis) taking a respite from his netherworld bonfire, and a pale, fishy demon with his mouth sewn shut. I was mildly disappointed not to see the big phantom looming over Pearce in the promotional image for the film on Hulu, but I realized it doesn’t really matter when you have these types of character and story choices so decisively embedded in the narrative. There is a storyline involving Martha Cratchitt (a gut-wrenching Vinette Robinson) that I thought was a little too much, but it did seem to give her character an extra weight I haven’t seen before, and I thought the resolution of the story handled this thread well, and at least showed a willingness to make a bold storytelling choice.
A few of the reviews I came across couldn’t get past the adaptation’s bleak tone. Melanie McFarland of Salon noted its “overuse of dark lens filters, the grinding sorrow hovering over everything,” and Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com characterized the show as “three joyless hours of watching an adaptation try to justify its edginess.” McFarland also concedes how the traditional ending of A Christmas Carol “may not feel honest, but it is a necessary leavening remedy to a ghost story that ends with a man staring at his own headstone at the end of a lifelong parade of his moral failures.” Whether or not that is a necessary ingredient in an adaptation, in this A Christmas Carol I found it hard not to find joy when the ghost of Christmas present leads Scrooge through a church filled with people who have come together to sing to the rafters, in spite of everything. It is a moment that shows the cracks in the structure of despair that those who would have it have built for us, cracks that let a little light shine through. That feels not just honest to me, but downright moving.
