How Dickens wrote 'A Christmas Carol'

The Man Who Invented Christmas has a lively spirit.

Few things are more boring than watching someone write unless it's watching some think through the kind of problems that can furrow even the most confident authorial brows during the creation of a written work.

Such is the obvious difficulty that confronted director Bharat Nalluri in making The Man Who Invented Christmas, the story of how Charles Dickens wrote his beloved A Christmas Carol.

To accomplish his task, Nalluri presents a series of scenes in which the great author tries out names in search of one that fits a character. He also shows Dickens meeting people in the real world who inspire characters who later appear in his fiction or tossing things about in his study as he agonizes about how to bring his story to its memorable conclusion.

Based on a book by Les Standiford, Nalluri's movie introduces Dickens during a period when, at the age of 31, he already had become famous. But after a trip to America, Dickens -- played in generally cheerful fashion by Dan Stevens -- was forced to deal with a couple of commercial flops, not to mention the high standard of living the author had set for himself.

What to do when sales of Martin Chuzzlewit fizzled? The movie's title, of course, tips us off.

Born of desperation and pressing monetary concerns, A Christmas Carol pushed its way into the holiday canon, a sheer act of authorial will. To show us exactly how this happened, Nalluri takes us into Dickens' study where the author meets and converses with characters who'll appear in the finished work. These "ghosts" or figments of Dickens' imagination (played by a variety of actors) don't always soothe the panic that besets the author as he struggles to finish the work in time to reach bookstores by Christmas.

I don't know if Dickens literally invented Christmas spirit as we have come to know it, but that's the notion that underlies the movie which gives the role of Scrooge -- as he evolves in Dickens' imagination -- to Christopher Plummer. Plummer makes a worthy addition to the gallery of embittered Scrooges who have been brought to the screen by any number of actors. (I still favor Alastair Sim in the 1951 version.)

While writing, Dickens also must attend to his domestic life. Morfydd Clark portrays Dickens' devoted but never subordinate wife, and Jonathan Pryce shows up as Dickens' father, a playful but fiscally irresponsible man who once, to Dickens' lasting shame, did a stretch in debtors prison.

Nalluri handles this difficult period in Dickens' life with flashbacks that build toward a not-so-surprising reveal about the indignities Dickens faced as a boy.

A fine cast of additional supporting actors keeps Stevens from having to fly solo. Justin Edwards portrays Dickens' agent John Forster. Dickens and Forster make a couple of visits to the Garrick Club, a writers' haunt where Dickens sometimes is tormented by another novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray (Miles Jupp). Few things, we presume, buoy a writer's spirits as much as the difficulties faced by a rival.

We also find Dickens befriending and then offending one of his servants (Anna Murphy), an uneducated young woman who nonetheless has a sharp taste for stories.

Simon Callow adds late-picture tang as John Leech, the renowned illustrator who did the artwork for A Christmas Carol.

For all of Nalluri's invention, watching Dickens develop his story becomes a bit repetitive, and those who believe that someone other than Dickens actually invented Christmas may be surprised by the movie's reminder that Christmas wasn't always celebrated with decorated trees, plum pudding and gifts. Nalluri and screenwriter Susan Coyne treat the matter with a throwaway line when a character wonders why Dickens wants to make such a fuss over a "minor holiday."

I can't say that The Man Who Invented Christmas will (or should) hang at the top of anyone's cinematic tree, but, at its best, the movie has a lively spirit that keeps us from crying "Humbug."

Charles Dickens has an affair

Ralph Fiennes acts in and directs The Invisible Woman.

The most compelling reason to see The Invisible Woman -- a look at a long-running affair between author Charles Dickens and actress Nelly Ternan -- has less to do with the lure of illicit romance than with Ralph Fiennes' engaging portrayal of Dickens, an author of abundant talent, indefatigable energy and dazzling complexity.

In what might be his must spirited performance ever, Fiennes (who also directed) reminds us that Dickens was a self-dramatizing celebrity with an enviable capacity for work. Not only did Dickens write his often lengthy novels, he directed plays, acted, spoke frequently at public gatherings, fathered 10 children and conducted a busy, extracurricular personal life.

When Fiennes reads Dickens' prose to the author's adoring fans, he makes it clear that Dickens keenly understands the drama in his own work. In fact, drama -- sometimes even melodrama -- might be the most important thing to Dickens, both in his writing and in his private life.

The movie's title suggests that Ternan (Felicity Jones) was forced to subordinate herself to the demands of the great man's image. The 45-year-old Dickens was married when he met Ternan, who was 18 at the time of their first encounter. Dickens discovered Ternan while he was directing and acting in an amateur production in Manchester.

According to the movie, Dickens eventually separated from his wife, but never publicly acknowledged his 13-year relationship with Ternan, a woman who (in the movie's view) understood and appreciated him in ways that his staid, portly and mostly resigned spouse (a fine Joanna Scanlan) never could.

In one of the movie's best scenes, Scanlan's Catherine gently concedes the race to Dickens' heart, but warns Ternan that no woman ever will be as important to the great man as his adoring and voracious public.

Working from a script by Abi Morgan -- who adapted a book by Claire Tomalin -- Fiennes alternates between Ternan's life as a married school teacher and her youthful days with Dickens. The structure emphasizes the fact that Ternan -- often seen taking brisk walks on a lonely Margate beach -- is struggling with her past.

Jones tempers youthful enthusiasm with growing unease. Ternan, we learn, is a mediocre actress whose mother (a fine Kristen Scott Thomas) takes on a difficult task: She angles to advance her daughter's prospects while also protecting her.

At one point, Dickens' friend and fellow author Wilkie Collins (Tom Hollander) tries to convince Nelly that she's duty bound to break with convention and accept the role of perpetual mistress. Men, Nelly says, can afford to be sexual pioneers: Victorian women can't.

Toward the end of the movie, Nelly has a conversation with a sympathetic cleric (John Kavanagh), and the movie proceeds to a redemptive finale. Nelly apparently has digested her past, and is ready to move on.

Fiennes has directed before (Coriolanus), but I'm not sure that he's mastered the art of being on both sides of the camera. In The Invisible Woman, his work in front of the camera surpasses what he achieves behind it, despite able assistance from cinematographer Rob Hardy and production designer Maria Djurkovic, who team to create a finely detailed 19th Century environment.

For all of its achievements, The Invisible Woman seems a small potatoes drama, a minor and sometimes sluggish portrait of Victorian womanhood into which the character of Dickens breathes most of the movie's life. I can't know Fiennes intentions, but I find it difficult to believe that's what he had in mind.