What is the Best Rendition of A Christmas Carol?
A Christmas Carol (1999) At its heart, Charles Dickens' story of A Christmas Carol is grim. It's one of lost love, a lifetime of regret, the death of close friends, greed, selfishness, and essentially explores the darkest heart of humanity. Few renditions of the original story actually succeed in their efforts to convey Dickens' message of transformation, in which the cruelest and greediest of man is redeemed and changes his way into someone loving and kind, but David Jones' version, starring Patrick Stewart, succeeds fantastically. Unlike other versions of the story, which almost reduce the character of Ebenezer Scrooge to a cartoonish and comical villain who seems too over the top to earn either sympathy or resentment from those who watch the film, Patrick Stewart portrays Scrooge with a surprising amount of realism. Through Stewart's remarkable talent as an actor and David Jones' vision as a director, Scrooge is no longer a parody of the villain pre...