It’s England, 1833, where something clearly runs in the water that’s producing so many literary greats…
Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) has a show scheduled in Manchester. His family and friends arrive as his cheering-squad and to perform in bit parts. The family is led by Mrs. Frances Ternan (Kristin Scott Thomas) a loving widow whose world revolves around her three daughters. She wants them to have what she lost in their father. She’s not concerned with the older ones, but for the financial future and failing acting career of the youngest, “Nelly” (Felicity Jones) who might be best ‘pimped out’ to Dickens. He seems enamored by the young girl. After all, the rewards of an artist’s profession are rarely monetary. But, Nelly, can practically recite every line – and quite trippingly off the tongue – every one of his books. When Dickens meets Nelly, she’s performing “The Frozen Deep.” Dickens declares to Nelly’s mother, Scott Thomas, “She has something.”
Yes, apparently Dicken’s soul.
The problem is that Dickens is married to a battle-ax of a brute that bore him multiple children, but has zero passion for his writing, while the young Nelly is magical and inspiring to Dickens creations. But she’s not his Muse…and at first, barely his mistress. Instead, the proposition is that Nelly will remain invisible. Where the press is concerned…she won’t even exist.
And so like many loves stories of men with pens, they begin a ferocious affair that combines heart, soul, body and mind. And narcissism….his. Nothing can stand in a great writer’s way….not babies, not derailed trains, not any tragedy. [spoiler alert] All great writers had horrid childhoods that turned into tortured pages.
Dickens wife warns Nelly in a very poignant scene, “I had to share him with his public.” The lines of what is more important in Dicken’s life become blurred for him. But they also become blurred for us. Is young Nelly in love with Dickens because he’s Charles Dickens the writer, or Dickens the man? Either way, like most tortured lovers of artists circa 1800s, she not only loses her identity in him, but eventually changes her identity with a new name.
But once she becomes a secret, the story has no place to go, yet oddly and magically continues to move by alternating – with a grown Nelly years later -as she withholds burning secrets from her passionate past. She tries to ward off her harbored pain through daily brisk walks on the beach, hoping to free her soul of the demon of Dickens. Her husband, George (Tom Burke) worries about her emotional distance. Nelly’s only solace is the one-too-many Dickens original novels that line her already bulging shelves. After Dickens death he’s become a household name, but in Nelly’s heart, he remains the love of her life.
Fiennes stars, as well as directs this breathtaking masterpiece. He’s assembled an English cast that is superb in each of their individual performances, ultimately creating a medley, while Kristin Scott Thomas, the matriarch of all the actresses, barely has to enter the room to command it, even when her lines are silent, because we can feel her maternal desire on her face.
Dickens unacceptable yet acceptable behavior somehow manages to garnish a four tiara rating from the Screen Queen.