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 presented in Charles Dickens'  original masterpiece. Instead he is real, his cruelties feel genuine and resemble the same sort of heartlessness exhibited by people in the real world rather than being unreasonable mean acts he carries out simply because the script requires that he does so. Scrooge is a living and breathing character, who copes with his heartache and lifetime of suffering through bringing pain to others, unable to deal with the reality of the sad and lonely life he led after failed relationships, deceased business partners, and a traumatizing childhood filled with even more death and suffering.

This background is provided in relatively every other portrayal of the story of A Christmas Carol, but never before has it felt so real and genuine. There is depth to Stewart's acting, in which his anger and hatred is layered with the sadness peeking out from beneath. The sorrow he feels when he finally comes to terms with the person his upbringing and past have shaped him to become is so real it's practically tangible to the audience, and it makes the joy he feels once he finds true peace with who he is and the sort of life he has led all the more powerful.

Stewart's acting is not the only thing which makes this film fantastic. The atmosphere the film carries is the exact sort of dark and brooding nature which has never quite been replicated before. The darkness of this rendition is even horrifying at times, particularly when Scrooge meets with the ghosts of Christmas present and Christmas future (as well as when he is visited by his deceased business partner), and the script and dark nature of the soundtrack leaves no room for comic relief to ease the tension. There are times when this film is even difficult to watch, simply because it is unashamed of how dark it must become, and it feels no need to restrain itself for the sake of this being a family film because letting the tone of the movie become so dark allows the ending to feel that much brighter.