The Personal History of David Copperfield

seen on 12 February 2020

Armando Iannucci directs the excellent Dev Patel as the titular hero in his adaptation with Simon Blackwell of Charles Dickens's novel in which the narrator accounts for his life and tries to establish whether he will indeed be the hero of his own tale. The fine supporting cast includes Tilda Swinton as an eccentrically fierce Aunt Betsy Trotwood, Hugh Laurie as the troubled Mr Dick, Peter Capaldi as the optimistic but financially imprudent Wilkins Micawber, Rosalind Eleazar as Agnes Wickfield, Morfydd Clark as both David's mother and his first love Dora Spenlow, and Ben Whishaw as the ever-creepy Uriah Heep.

It's a long novel full of now famous episodes, many of which feature in the film, though sometimes re-distributed amongst the characters (Micawber here has only a very small part in unmasking the odious Heep). In general terms, with an early emphasis on David's obsession with writing, and with catching precisely the idiomatic and dialect expressions of the characters he meets, the adaptation works very well in its framework of a public reading of the novel emerging out of the life - in itself a clever nod to Dickens's own popular readings aloud of famous scenes from his works. It explains how David's successful career as a writer developed from his always astute observation of others, and why almost every scene must have David present as both witness and participant. (Possibly the only occasion on which this convention is flouted is the very brief scene in which Mrs Copperfield attempts to dissuade Mr Murdstone from beating David, while she is outside the room; but this allows us to 'witness' the beating without seeing it ourselves, something of a relief.)

The period detail looks good; the expansive casting is really refreshing, and especially vindicated in winning performances by Dev Patel, and by Ranveer Jaiswal as the boy David. Some problems are perhaps not successfully overcome - for example, David's ready acceptance of the dangerous charm of Steerforth, as much as his puppyish love for Dora Spenlow, indicate a blindness which it would be too hazardous to dwell on in a basically happy tale. Curiously, sharp observational skills are not always accompanied by a sound judgement of character.  The truly damaging arc of Steerforth's career somehow becomes rather muted by the omission of the final consequences to the Yarmouth family (Ham's death and Emily's emigration). On the other hand, the rather cloying business of Dora Spenlow is rather brilliantly handled by her rueful but unexpectedly wise request to be written out of the story.

It's a clever adaptation of Dickens's energetic and fecund novelistic style in a medium that requires strongly made visual and character-driven impressions in place of wordy circumstantial details.