‘If you’re unhappy with Reform, this is a soothing balm’: Gurinder Chadha on her reboot of A Christmas Carol
She has directed cross-cultural versions of Pride and Prejudice and It’s a Wonderful Life. Now, the film-maker is reworking Dickens’s A Christmas Carol – with an Asian Scrooge To begin...
By Kaleem Aftab · The Guardian Culture
She has directed cross-cultural versions of Pride and Prejudice and It’s a Wonderful Life. Now, the film-maker is reworking Dickens’s A Christmas Carol – with an Asian Scrooge To begin with, Gurinder Chadha was wandering through the Charles Dickens Museum in London, trying to commune with the author’s spirit. “If you were alive today,” the film-maker asked him, “what story would you tell?” And, she wondered in the same breath: “What can I bring as my own vision to this wonderful story of yours?” While Dickens’s ghost didn’t materialise, she found her answers and, during lockdown, wrote her own version of his ghost story A Christmas Carol. Giving it the title Christmas Karma, the 65-year-old Londoner has created an energetic, flamboyant musical film starring The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar as Mr Sood – her modern-day Scrooge – alongside Eva Longoria, Billy Porter and Boy George as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The rest of the cast is stacked like decorations on a Norway spruce, with Hugh Bonneville, Danny Dyer and Pixie Lott further illuminating proceedings. Continue reading...