Hi, Page Turner here! I hope you've had a good Christmas so far! Here's my Movie Overview for "The Man that Invented Christmas". I'll come out with the review later. I hope you enjoy it! (Spoilers ahead!)
Oliver Twist was a smashing success.Charles Dickens passed a few beggars on the street. With a kind smile, he pressed money into their hands.
"Oliver Twist is inspired," the wife said, her dark eyes sparkling to the author, "I cried at the little mite's plight, well into the night."
"You cry at anything," her husband growled.
"You didn't like it?" Charles asked, glancing up at the stiff, rigid man with narrowed eyes.
The man spat out words about the poor, the offense of having a book written about them, the vulgarity of it all.
"Are there no prisons, no workhouses?" the cruel man spit out, "Those who are badly off must go there!"
Charles' blood boiled as he stared in disbelief at the thin gentleman with greying hair and a silk suit.
"Many would rather die than go there!" Charles answered, emotion making his voice waver as he stared steadily at the man.
"If they had rather die," the man said distinctly, his brows furrowed with contempt, "They had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!"
Oliver Twist was a smashing success. But that was a while ago...
Charles didn't know what to do. The house was being remodeled, but the bills had yet to be paid. The last few books were a failure in between his greatest success. He gave money to the poor without reserve, but his bank was beginning to buckle. He needed to write another book, but nothing was coming to him.
A little boy desperately grabbed his father's hands through the bars of the paddywagon, his own grubby ones shaking from the cold. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Why did they have to go? Why was he the one who had to be brave?
Charles walked about England, looking for a new idea for his book. A portly man and his wife danced through the crowded streets in the market, a crowd clapping and cheering them on. Charles smiled, amid the pots and pans, the carts of meat and the rows of cloth. Charles walked until he almost crashed into a funeral ceremony in a grimy, hole-in-the-wall cemetery. A paupers grave. Only one man was there to pay his respects--if that's what you could call them, Charles observed, unseen. The attendee watched bitterly, alone. He seemed to stand over the grave in bitter approval of the present, and even more bitter disdain of the past. He turned around, and noticed Charles. He gave him a stare.
"Humbug," the man muttered.
Oh, how Charles loved his little children!
He did love them, desperately. How the love he had craved as a child poured over into them. He even became fast friends with their young nurse, a young girl of about fifteen, whose avid love of reading encouraged the writer. He opened up his study as a library and became best friend with little Tara, who listened to the stories he was writing as if they were flesh and blood, real living people.
The little boy was scared. He was cold and his fingers shook. The other boys working jeered at him. He knew they were planning to do something horrid. He sniffed and tried not to cry, a long desperate cry. He thought of his family.
Charles' father came to his household of young children and beautiful wife, bringing mayhem, frivolity, and expenses with him like a royal train, and along with it, Charles' anger. His outlandish father even brought his children a pet crow.
"The symbol of death," his head housekeeper bemoaned. Glancing angrily at his father and forcing a smile, he wondered bitterly if she were right. His father seemed to suck the life out of him.
And so the stage is set....Let the Christmas Carol begin!
Charles had an idea for a book. And what a marvelous idea! He paced his room, his wild, blonde curly hair falling into his eyes. He scrambled for the name of the character. He had told Tara that once you have the name of the character, they become alive. "Scrooge!" he suddenly shouted. Scrooge was in the room with him, glancing at him with disdain. Good ole Humbug!
Charles continued to work diligently on his book. He talked to his friend, John Forester, about it. It was an inspired idea, about a miser, a a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Charles poured his lifeblood into his book, finding inspiration in every face, finding sorrow and joy, venting his anger at the cruel humanity who scorned the poor, and finding a small book in which to show the world.
And he read it all to little Tara, who followed along, as if swallowed up into a dream land.
But he had only a few more weeks to finish it by Christmas. He and John Forester worked hard, scrambling at the printers, fighting and appealing to the illustrator, and, over all, scrambling, climbing, falling, slipping, sliding, and hurrying on like a locomotive until Christmas. But the bank was failing, and with the crushing burden of his father, paired with a new Dickens baby on the way, Charles needed to get the book finished. But could his budget hold?
And his father. His father was always there, kindness and foolishness, wonder and disillusionment, dead dreams and past fears. Charles could barely keep his temper. In fact, he didn't.
The book was almost completed, the characters sent into motion, real, flesh-and-blood, the life of the living in the pages and ink of Charles' hand. That's how Tara felt. As tensions rose within his home with his father and wife, Charles felt the burden to finish. But he couldn't. Because he had one final question in this book of answered questions.
What was to happen to Scrooge?
What horrible death was to befall him? Would Tiny Tim live? As he read the demise of Tiny Tim to little Tara, her eyes filled with tears. "No!" she shouted, hot tears falling, "It can't be! Not Tiny Tim! Not Tiny Tim! You can't let him die, Mr. Dickens, oh! you can't!"
The little boy shivered at his workbench, both from bone-freezing cold, but also from a heart-writhing despair. His father's words echoed in his ears. The look of his family being driven away haunted him. He squeezed his eyes shut. Something slammed down in front of him and he sensed one of the boys right behind him. He opened his eyes and lurched backwards. A rat. He turned upon the boy and before he knew it, was in a fight. The other boy swung and connected. He was on his back, dodging blows, choking back the tears of despair and pain, all the while his father's words in his ear, telling him to be brave, to fight on with blood of iron and a heart of ice...Charles' teeth were set on edge as he stared at that old factory, thinking of those old memories. Heart of ice...Why couldn't he finish the story? He had no time left, he had no money. No money. Like all those years ago. His blue eyes filled with tears as he clenched his teeth, staring at the factory, Scrooge before his eyes, pain in his heart. Those past few days, he had driven everyone away. Tara, his wife...his father. They were all gone. All that remained was Scrooge and his book. Could even Scrooge, the covetous old sinner, be saved? Surely not!
Charles broke into the factory, the dark, dungeony, hideous, soot-stricken factory. It was night and barely any light was in. It was just him alone...with his ghosts.
He remembered those days, those choking, desperate, terrible days. He was so far past that. He was famous. He was Charles Dickens.
He was all alone in that dingy, dank shoe factory. Just him. And Scrooge.
"So," Scrooge said turning on Charles. "This is where it all began?" The bitter man's face twisted into a smile. "That the great Charles Dickens was a factory worker? His father in debtor's prison? What do you say to that? What do you say, you worthless man!"
Scrooge was hunting him, haunting him. He couldn't finish the story, he couldn't. He couldn't move into the future when the ghosts of the pasts had such a hold that he felt like he was sinking, like all those years ago. Scrooge came closer, and closer.Charles could feel his heart beating with fear.
Oliver Twist was a smashing success.
Yes, the story of the little boy was famous. It was so powerful because...well, because....
Charles Dickens was him.
"You worthless brat," Scrooge said advancing. "You useless, worthless, factory boy!" the last part was spit out, driving fear and ice into Charles' heart. He stumbled backwards, a weight seeming to fall on him.
"Go away, Scrooge!" Charles yelled. "Get away!" he remembered words that his father had said. Forcing himself up, he straightened.
"No man that lightens the burden of another is useless," Charles cried with triumph.
And just like that Scrooge was in a grave, in the floor of that dingy factory. Charles panted as the earthen walls began to close.
"Who grave is this?" Scrooge asked, his voice wavering. Suddenly, all was very, very quiet. There was silence, except for that horrible, creaking earthy sound of the grave, slowly closing.
Charles looked down at the man, his voice shaking with emotion and triumph. "Yours, you miserable man."
Charles waited. Scrooge put out a wavering hand at the earth walls that were slowly moving. His weathered and battered face showed defeat. "But..."
Charles looked down at Scrooge. What a fitting end. "What are you going to do?" he asked the old man with scorn.
"Please," Scrooge said, as the walls closed in, shuddering. "Please..."
Charles was ready to go, but his eyes remained fast on the grave.
"Please," Scrooge said. "I'm...."
There was silence.
"I'm..." Scrooge continued in a croaking voice, with shame, "I'm sorry."
The grinding sound of earth stopped and Scrooge looked up in surprise. The old man was saved.
"And so," Charles said, a soft, surprised smile of his own breaking on his face, "That is how the story ends. This is how it ends." Light flooded his heart and he wiped his sweaty face with a shaking hand.
He looked down at the factory floor. There was no Scrooge, no grave, no ghosts of his past. "No man was past forgiveness," he murmured. "No story without hope."
Charles looked around at the factory, a symbol of failure.
No one was without hope. Scrooge was saved. The Christmas Carol had an ending. And Charles was free.
And so on that Christmas Eve, a book was published and released.
A man dined with his father, extending his own forgiveness. His own bitter heart of Scrooge, with all its sourness, anger, and pain had been saved.
Charles ran back to his house, looking like a silly fool, but what of it? His own heart was laughing. He stopped his father at the train station, barely stopping to see the surprise on his father's weary old face. Christmas was alive in his heart.
He made amends with Tara, a veritable Tiny Tim in her own way, saving Scrooge and finding the love of a family after all.
And reader, Tiny Tim did NOT die, nor was Scrooge lost for good. Scrooge was found in the end, and forgiven.
And of Charles? It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge, and his little book, a little song called a Christmas Carol taught others about the generosity, forgiveness, and love displayed at Christmas, too.
Finally, as the story is coming to its last pages, we must make note of one last event.
As Christmas morning dawned upon a happy family, upon the newly lightened hearts, the black crow that the father had brought alighted to the rafters.
The small window was open, and the crow glanced at the snowy sky on early Christmas morn.
And, with a flash of its black wings, the black crow left that old house.
God bless us, every one.
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