A Christmas Carol

A spirited ‘Carol’: Director Zemeckis makes a leap in creative visualization with a stunning, fresh retelling of the Dickens classic

November 06, 2009|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

Every generation may get the “Christmas Carol’’ it deserves, from the all-dancing, all-singing horrors of “Scrooge’’ (1970) to the brash comic mugging of “Scrooged’’ (1988) to the sleaze of the recent “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.’’ (The best? All votes for George C. Scott and Mr. Magoo will be counted, but anyone who puts in the research knows the 1951 British “Christmas Carol’’ starring Alastair Sim is numero uno.)

How does Jim Carrey fit into this? The early 2000s are a time of relentless technical whizbangery - if Dickens were alive, he’d probably be tweeting “Martin Chuzzlewit’’ - so the latest “Christmas Carol’’ is a thing of bits and bytes. More than that, it’s filmmaker Robert Zemeckis’s latest adventure in 3-D motion-capture technology, in which live actors are filmed on a stage, then “redrawn’’ with digitized skin and costumes and placed into wholly imagined wonder-worlds.

“The Polar Express’’ (2004) was Zemeckis’s first stab at the process, and the verdict is split between those who thought that was a fine movie and those who felt they were watching corpses at play. If you’re of the latter persuasion (I am), you’ll probably head into “A Christmas Carol’’ with dread (I did).

Shockingly, the new film turns out to be very good, at times close to brilliant: a darkly detailed marvel of creative visualization that does well by Dickens and right by audiences - when it’s not trying to sell them a theme park ride. This “Carol’’ isn’t for young children (they’ll be bored and then terrified). The filmmakers still don’t have the eyes right. But rarely has the potential for a new method of moviemaking been so convincingly, even breathtakingly displayed.

Early on, there’s a set piece shot (or “shot,’’ since no actual cameras were used) in which Zemeckis shows exactly what the form can do. Scrooge has stepped from indoors into the frigid streets and our point of view lifts into the air and high above a London swathed in a sunny snow-shower, then down into an alley where a dog steals a shank bone from starving urchins, back above to course over the rooftops, swooping through a bustling marketplace before settling once more upon the storklike antihero disappearing into his place of business.

The shadows and architectural details are painterly, the use of 3-D is intelligent rather than aggressive. Only the extras have a mannequin stiffness, even as Scrooge himself is rendered down to the last wattle and mole. The shot’s not dramatically necessary - on one level, Zemeckis and his gnomes at ImageMovers Digital are just showing off - and yet it is, since it hints at the vast emotional and temporal spaces through which Scrooge will soon soar.