I love M. R. James stories so I'm a fan of Ghost Stories for Christmas and up until now I've always been annoyed whenever I've read any criticism of these adaptations that amounted to "all the best stories have been done." It isn't the stories to blame, it's the filmmakers. Ash Tree is just as creepy as Whistle, for instance. And Casting the Runes, a great story, was adapted poorly. The Mezzotint has always been a favorite story of mine and while it has the potential to be a first rate adaptation the BBC dropped the ball here.
The script here is largely okay. It doesn't try to over write James' story and add too much unnecessary material, but it's at its worst when it does.
The story: an art dealer comes across a mezzotint printing of an old house. Each time he looks at it he sees something different. A story is slowly unfolding with each successive viewing. There is a creepy figure stalking toward the house. Next, a ground floor window is opened. Meanwhile the lead's also preoccupied with uncovering his own family history, an investigation which ultimately involves the very house depicted in the mezzotint.
There a few problems, one of them now all too familiar to tv and movie audiences. Picture a writer's room in LA or London, doesn't matter which, congratulating each other on their sermonizing to the dumb, backwards half of their audience and virtue signaling to the rest and you'll know what I mean. Early in the script a few characters (stuffy men doing stuffy men things like drinking scotch, smoking pipes, and playing cards) out of nowhere debate whether or not women should be given degrees at college, and they do so in the same way a mother who just found a joint in her kid's bedroom might hamfistedly launch into a "gateway drug" lecture at the first available opportunity. There is no debate, actually: one of the lead's guests says it's not tradition and the other says who cares about tradition. Funnily enough the latter, an Asian gent, even asks "what the devil has changed here in the past 500 years?" I guess the producers of this want us to think he's a bit soft? Of course, his whole attitude is very similar to those of certain keyboard warriors of a certain political religion-cocky, self-righteous, dogmatic. In a saner world this would be a critique of this new archetype: the "I'm correct because the script says so, logic is evil if it doesn't support my 'self-evident' conclusions" type of character.
I'm not against women pursuing higher education, I doubt anyone watching this is, but I am against reducing the subject to such an absurd, facile degree that it should seem as obviously wrongheaded to a person 100 years ago as it does to a person today-it robs the scene of a great deal of atmosphere and cultural context. It just seems like an impudent rebuke of M. R. James, the artist whose material these people are using, because he was against integrating the sexes at college. Bizarrely, the filmmakers actually seem to confuse the issue: the question of integrating the sexes is very different than whether women should be given degrees. Anyway, the lead agrees that women should not get degrees and that's that. So out of left field does this come a viewer could only conclude that the director had no faith in the actors or set and costume designers to sell the fact that this is a period piece. "Look, we're in the past! These aren't just 21st century toffs or hipsters, we promise." That is until, after a few scares, towards the end of the film the lead randomly announces he's changed his mind, that "one must look to the future...not the past." If they wanted to convey the idea that looking to the past for answers may be detrimental, they could have hitched it to a better wagon than women-attending-college. Unless the idea is supposed to be that the past is totally and always bad. And also self-evidently so. Which is beyond wrong and stupid.
This really is a quibble. The filmmakers might see these two short scenes as the key to the story but if they were excised the film would be improved. There are bigger, more fundamental problems that really hurt The Mezzotint. First and foremost of which is the direction or/and the acting. The lead actor is quite good and appropriately understated. The three awkward performances are:
1) There is a maid and she has one scene where she's supposed to be frightened after seeing the Mezzotint and the actress may as well be on a community theater stage hamming it up so the back row feels they've gotten their monies worth.
2) The lead consults a family history researcher-a woman, you see, because they realized they'd only have one female character otherwise and a maid at that-just stepped in from a role on Doctor Who. As if her characterization and manner of speaking weren't goofy enough they saddled the poor actress with an extremely cheap-looking wig that makes her pitiful and strange instead of fun and strange.
3) The toffiest of the lead's Stuffy Men Crew is Toast's roommate. And he acted this part just the same as his character in that comedy. I like him in Toast but he doesn't fit here. Maybe it was a casting mistake but the director sure doesn't get a different performance from him-if he even tried. Taken togrher with the zany old lady you must assume he was going for camp.
Another problem is a dropped subplot. One of the lead's friends was going to photograph the mezzotint so they could track the changes. Fun idea. Nothing came of this except one quick scene of him developing film in a darkroom that did nothing for the story.
Speaking of camp, I think the director would have gotten a more camp product if he'd played it straight. Something about the old GSFC productions is effectively creepy. And they're a bit camp, too. The older ones are rich with atmosphere. These newer ones may be in high definition but they're very low in texture. Maybe it has something to do with the old film and lighting processes? Why can a similar look not be achieved today! This looks like any old cheap soap. A few shots are nice, but they're not enough.
All in all, they still told a good story-despite their best efforts-there's a cool and creative ending, and a nice creature; it's a very watchable short film. It could have been a heck of a whole lot better with a more thoughtful approach that respected the source material and the writer of that source material, as well as the world he lived in. There are so many James experts they could have consulted to help shape the story and the look of the picture. Hubris, I guess, got in the way.
As for where this one ranks with the other latter day productions of Ghosts for Christmas: better than 2018's promising yet way too cheaply produced Dead Room, maybe on par with 2019's Martin's Close, but not as good as 2013's The Tractate Middoth.
Maybe they should move on to another writer? If they want to stick with a double initialed writer, there's always H. R. Wakefield. Lucky's Grove would be perfect-it's even a Christmas Story. Although he's more "problematic" to feminists than James is! It's almost 2022, you can't produce entertainment for entertainment's sake-if your source material doesn't have a political message, or you can't be arsed to find it, bludgeon your audience over the head with one.
The Mezzotint's fumbling of the period calls to mind Orwell:
"History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
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