Emotionless Carol a Real Humbug
I am not entirely sure what is going through Robert Zemeckis’ head anymore. The Oscar-winning mind behind films as diverse as Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Forest Gump has become consumed with the technological art of digital motion capture. His has become an almost single-minded crusade to make the process work, his adaptations of The Polar Express and Beowulf interesting if ultimately forgettable attempts at doing just that.
The Ghost of Christmas Present and Ebeneezer Scrooge (both Jim Carrey) in Walt Disney Pictures' A Christmas Carol
Now the filmmaker returns with a new version of Charles Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol. The production design is handsome. The non-character animation is stunning. Alan Silvestri’s (The Abyss) workmanlike score hits all the right yuletide notes. The camera movements are positively stunning. And, finally, the story itself is as handsome and as sturdy as it has arguably ever been.
Unfortunately, much like Zemeckis’ prior digital forays, the character animation itself is coldly plastic. There is an almost constant deadness to the eyes that is deeply distracting, while each person’s movements are so ungainly and wild even Gumby would look at them all wandering around and wonder why they look so uncomfortably odd.
Worst of all, and the thing that ultimately puts A Christmas Carol at the bottom of the director’s animated trio, the film is emotionally dead. Dickens’ story is arguably one of the most deeply profound, heartfelt and moving in all of English literature. Even throwaway adaptations like Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Scrooged and A Muppet Christmas Carol have been able to get right to the heart of the matter, stirring up an emotional response even when the presence of an animated mouse, a Kermit the Frog or a Bill Murray would have led you to believe otherwise.
That is not the case here. All I kept focusing on were the technical aspects. Why did Gary Oldman’s Bob Cratchit look like an odd shrunken combination of an Oompa-Loompa and a hobbit? How come Bob Hoskins’ Mr. Fezziwig seemed to be apart from the animation and not a part of it? Who in their right mind thought it was such a good idea to make Jim Carrey’s fiery Ghost of Christmas Past so freakishly creepy (and what was up with that oddly obnoxious accent)?
What I discovered as I watched the movie was that as a technological feat it was fairly noteworthy. The 3-D effects were superb (a scene of delicately falling snow stopped my breath) and the rendering of the environments is the best I think I’ve ever seen in a computer animated motion picture, and that includes everything released by Pixar. I loved the way Zemeckis was able to move his camera around, and whenever the focus was on its movement I found the movie to be remarkably immersive on a variety of levels.
But those character problems are a major issue. I didn’t care if Scrooge (played by Carrey in all his incarnations) changed his ways and became a new man. It didn’t matter to me if Tiny Tim (also played by Oldman) lived, died or continued on stranded in some previously unexplained plain of existence no one in the film knew about. There was no heart, nothing beating beneath the surface. The deadness in the eyes and the herky-jerkiness of the movement killed it all off, my feelings more in the way of indifference than they were of anything else.
There are two major exceptions. The first involves Scrooge sitting on a staircase, the second is the story’s well known coda here spoken by Bob Cratchit. In the former, the protagonist’s eyes come alive in a way I’ve never seen in one of Zemeckis’ digital films before. There is a human quality speaking to the very core of what it is he’s witnessed, an emotional depth both the remainder of the film and the character’s conception sorely lack.
As for the latter, almost with warning Cratchit’s eyes come alive with a warmhearted tenderness that’s downright shocking. More, his movements become human and natural, his slow walk towards the camera having a natural grace no other figure in the feature comes close to matching.
I don’t want to say Zemeckis’ continued obsession with motion capture is all humbug. James Cameron has used it for his eagerly anticipated Avatar, while Peter Jackson utilized it to great effect in all his Lord of the Rings adventures as well as in King Kong. But those films aren’t completely beholden to the technology, using it only when the time, place and character warrants. I admit in the case of Avatar that is purely speculation on my part, but the simple fact is that Zemeckis is the only director today using it from start to finish. While I do not know if Beowulf, The Polar Express or now A Christmas Carol would be better as live action epics I can say using motion capture certainly doesn’t help them, this timeless holiday fable just the latest of the director’s unfortunate – and somewhat mystifying – disappointments.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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