In London, the movie stars Plummer as Ralph and Tom Courtenay as his sardonic, perhaps half-crazed manservant. His relationship with Plummer is alternately described by McGrath as that of an old married couple or Laurel and Hardy in a rest home. Why they never part company, despite their mutual loathing, is never explained, and perhaps it’s better that way. The great Edward Fox also makes an appearance as a wizened, dirty old robber baron out to seduce some young thing. The young people in London (Rosola Garai as Nicholas’ sister and Nicholas Rowe as a would-be suitor) pop up to become strong and noble in the faced of aged cynicism. Once Nicholas returns to London, the wonderful Timothy Spall plays his good-hearted and ample-bellied benefactor, joined by Gerard Horan as his twin brother, at a time when twin brothers could dress the same at every occasion. And apple-pie beauty Anne Hathaway joins the cast to win Nicholas’ heart.
In the DVD commentary McGrath’s praises the cast in this way: “If a bomb fell on our set one day it would have wiped out a lot of joy givers.” 13 or 14 actors get pre-title billing and that still doesn’t cover all the interesting parts. Fans of British acting need no introductions for many of these actors, while other audiences will still find them smilingly familiar. There isn’t enough space to name everywhere you’ve seen them before, so here’s a partial list of their combined credits: “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Bend It Like Beckham,” the Anthony Hopkins/Julie Taymor “Titus,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Birdcage,” “I Capture the Castle,” “Young Sherlock Holmes,” “Gandhi,” “Iris,” “Moulin Rouge,” Ian McKellan's “Richard III,” “Time Bandits,” “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “All or Nothing,” “Chicken Run,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet,” “Vanilla Sky,” “The Lion King,” “The Dresser,” “Dr. Zhivago,” and, of course, “The Sound of Music.” I lost track of how many actors from Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy” appear in “Nicholas Nickleby,” which also serves as a reunion for many of “Topsy-Turvy’s” art directors, costumers, and production designers.
Everyone in Dickens is something of a caricature, but he was such a merciful guy that even the bad guys are given a chance to seem human. I read “Oliver Twist” recently, and its villains do absolutely nothing to earn our sympathy, yet so much time is devoted to how sad their demises are. That book ends by saying that the only prerequisites to God’s love and mercy are to be “weak and erring.” McGrath has kept that sense of sympathy in “Nicholas Nickleby” and made an enormously human, loving film. Even Plummer’s wicked Uncle Ralph, who is the Monty Burns of the Industrial Revolution, is given moments of empathy and sadness.
In the same way that Dickens caricatured names and appearances to match someone’s soul, so houses, color schemes, and costumes have been made to match them as well. The result is a first-rate, beautiful production. The décor in Plummer’s house is all about unhatched eggs, skeletons, withered trees; everything is dead, stunted, and precisely beautiful. Costumes, buildings, and settings are uniformly grey when things are looking down for Nicholas and Smike, yet McGrath quietly brings in color as things begin to look up for them. We know they’re back on track when they meet an acting troupe with a pink horse.
In its numerous incarnations, “Nicholas Nickleby” has often been a TV miniseries, and has even been an 8-hour play performed by England’s Royal Shakespeare Company. McGrath has, obviously, had to excise much, yet the story feels complete, hermetic, and comprehensible. We never feel like we’re eavesdropping on two people discussing a book we’ve never read. This is in no small part thanks to the delightful score by Rachel Portman, which serves as a kind of dramatic shorthand, and has been going through my head for days.
I glance over my review of “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary” and I see the words “I’m kind of bored with the mainstream language of film.” How wrong I was. “Nicholas Nickleby” is a conventional film, yes, complete with melodramatic lows and winsome highs, but it worked on me exactly as it intended to. I cheered for the characters when they did good and feared for them when things were bad, I liked who I was supposed to like, loathed who I was supposed to loathe, and ended the movie with a bittersweet lump in my throat. Let the movie’s detractors call it melodramatic, sentimental, sugary, maybe even manipulative. They’re probably right. But the movie has such an open-faced spirit of goodness. It is not at all ironic, detached, or mocking about any of this, but honors what is honorable and pities what is selfish. I thought I was too sophisticated for all this and thank God I was wrong. “Nicholas Nickleby” made me feel happy to be alive.
Finished November 8th, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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