Recently I was itching to see a movie, and lacking for any Oscar worthy options I opted to check out A Christmas Carol, the new 3D animated feature starring Jim Carrey.  I’d read mixed reviews, but I’m a fan of the story and was interested in checking out another 3D film.  The 3D animation was incredibly well done.  3D seems to be maturing these days.  We’re all familiar with the 3D gimmicks of the 80’s and 90’s.  Back then 3D existed to bring attention to itself, and was much more at home in theme parks than in film.  Today 3D is much less about throwing spears or swarms of bees in your face and is much more subtle.  I don’t remember a single scene in A Christmas Carol where 3D was used as a gimmick to poke some object out of the screen.  Instead it simply gave depth to the mise en scène, a depth that simply served to draw you into the story.  And isn’t this the way it always goes?  New flashy technology comes out and it’s used to draw attention to itself rather than to serve the goal of the technology.  It’s like when PowerPoint was new and everyone thought they needed to use ridiculous animations on every bullet point.  It brought a lot of attention to their fancy new technology and did nothing to help them actually present.  But I digress…

Robert Zemeckis’ treatment of the classic Charles Dickens story is well done.  I had forgotten how much A Christmas Carol is part holiday tale, part horror story.  Zemeckis brings back the scary to this familiar and perhaps domesticated tale.  Scrooge is confronted with his own impending death throughout the story and it has the effect of making this morality play very gripping.  Hard-core Lutherans aside, I think Christians will find value in the message in A Christmas Carol, that how we live this life (especially toward the “least of these”) has a profound impact on what the next life holds for us.  This is a “works righteousness” tale from start to finish, and I’m entirely comfortable with that.  There is an interesting scene in the film that also seems to speak to this generally held attitude in the world that we Christians care more about our rituals and doctrines than we do justice and mercy.  The second ghost, the ghost of Christmas present, appears to be a kind of giant Norwegian Jesus who is constantly laughing.  At one point when he is giving Scrooge a tour of what is happening during this Christmas they visit a church and then a bakery and Scrooge makes some kind of cynical comment about depriving people of the chance to get food every seventh day, to which the ghost of Christmas present angrily replies “There are some upon this earth of ours, so-called men of the cloth, who lay claim to know us, who are strange to us. Charge their doings on themselves, not us.”  An interesting couple of lines that are very close to what is written in Dickens original script that seem to imply the trustworthiness of God in spite of the mistakes His people (and the clergy) might make.

I had forgotten that A Christmas Carol is essentially a morality-play about greed, generosity to the poor and justice.  I walked into the theater expecting a festive holiday movie and left taking stock in how Scrooge-like I am in my life and in how I spend my own money.  I think that’s in large part due to Zemeckis sticking to Dickens text so well.