Dir: Douglas McGrath. Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Romola Garai,Tom Courtenay, Christopher Plummer, Anne Hathaway, Jim Broadbent, Jamie Bell, Juliet Stevenson.
Who would have guessed Dickens would make the transition to screen so well? Sure, the larger-than-life characters are perfect for film, but Dickens’ serialised prose and sprawling novels shouldn’t fit into a two hour block so damn well. Nicholas Nickleby, I’m pleased to say, is even better than the usual standard. Douglas McGrath has crafted a really superb piece of ensemble cinema; exciting, funny, and – of course – sad.
Like so many characters in Dickens, the Nickleby family are clinging onto their upper class status by the slimmest margin. When Nickleby senior
I really, really responded to this movie. Often, I think the temptation with Dickens is to take the path of least resistance and simply hang the whole thing on a wonderful cast. Now, the cast of Nicholas Nickleby is excellent, but Director McGrath has written a really fabulous screenplay, and shot the film with a definite flair. There’s a sense of style to Nicholas Nickleby which I think is very unusual for period pieces of any type.
Dotheboys Hall, the grim school where Nicholas is first exposed to the cruelties of the world is a fabulous, almost Horror-worthy location. Its spare and filthy sets are the perfect canvas for Jim Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson’s hollering schoolmasters, the Squeers. McGrath has used strong lighting and a very saturated colour palette to give this world an alternately dirty, starved look, or an almost overripe affluence. And in the context of Dickens I think it works really well.
As Nicholas, young newcomer Charlie Hunnam has fairly thankless role, but I never felt his performance took off like the others in the film. It’s easy to underplay Nicholas – or any Dickens protagonist – in the hope that a hint of normality will the win the affections of the crowd, but I don’t think it’s a particularly wise choice. The oft-times brutal world that Dickens writes of is one that takes its toll – whether he likes it or not – and I prefer a performance that reflects that.
Nonetheless, with a great cast, a fabulous collection of characters and confident, thoughtful direction, any quibbles I have with Nicholas Nickleby are just that. And I think, when we look at these levels of Dickensian squalor and poverty, it’s easy to find them melodramatic, and a little bit humorous. We should, however, take pause. Dickens wrote about what he knew: the poverty we see was very much a reality of the day, and is still a reality for most of the people living on this globe. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Dickens for all the olde worlde charm, has not been robbed of social context a hundred years later. If anything, it’s more rich, and more rewarding experience than before.
A.
Patrick Garson.
Comments?
gc(uk) Email Advanced Site Search
