The Dark Side

We watched the third and final episode of the BBC's latest adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol last night. This version of the tale featured a number of major changes related to key details, though the essential underlying mythic structure survived. At first, watching the opening episode, I'd found this disconcerting. Much of the opening dealt with the story of Jacob Marley and his travails after death, greatly expanding upon the spare details given in the original and this took me very much by surprise. But once I let go of my expectations I found the new treatment of the story both apt and fascinating, if extremely dark. It wasn't exactly Dickens, but then I'm so familiar with the original that it didn't matter as I wasn't really missing anything in being treated to something quite new - and what did very much survive was the spirit of Dickens's original, especially in the contrast between a strictly utilitarian calculus, as manifest in Scrooge, and a sense of the importance of the heart, as embodied in the Cratchits.

The whole thing was wonderful to look at and splendidly acted, with Guy Pearce excelling as an oddly youthful Scrooge. His emotional rebirth in the final episode was entirely convincing, with not an ounce of sentimentality about it.

Postscript: It would be remiss of me in the extreme not to mention Vinette Robinson's performance as Mary Cratchit. She combined strength and vulnerability in quite an extraordinary manner. The scene in which she was ready to have 'intercourse' with Scrooge to secure the money for an operation for Tiny Tim was excruciating in its convincingness. Not exactly Dickensian, but appropriate to all human experience of grim exploitation.