FILM OF THE WEEK
The Personal History of David Copperfield
Cert: PG; Now showing
IF we can thank Armando Iannucci for anything it is surely how he encourages us to laugh at the world. The Scottish (of Italian parentage) satirist has always had a way of rolling silliness into the dough of drama where it perhaps has no right to be.
The Death of Stalin, his scabrously dotty romp through the halls of the Kremlin, was rife with zingers of a very British hue, and the clashing colours turned out to be a stroke of genius. This adaptation of the Dickens staple is similarly beguiling, again softening some of the more dour edges of the saga’s latter chapters and instead emphasising the camp, the clownish and the perverse.
Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, Lion) is the titular Victorian hero around which the fates of kindness and villainy orbit. After disappointing his rich aunt Betsey (Tilda Swinton) by being born the wrong gender, we see the young David showing much promise under doting mother Clara (Morfydd Clark, who also plays Dora) and housekeeper Peggotty (Daisy May Cooper).
When Clara takes up with the horrid Murdstone siblings (Darren Boyd and Gwendoline Christie), David is sent off to work in a bottle factory. There, he learns about the world while lodging with Mr Micawber (Peter Capaldi), eventually breaking free following news of his mother’s death to reunite with Betsey and her equally eccentric partner Mr Dick (Hugh Laurie). Fateful encounters with James Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard), Uriah Heep (Ben Wishaw) and Agnes Wickfield (Rosalind Eleazar) follow in his undulating fortunes.
Dickens’s sprawling yarn is reliably hilarious in the hands of Iannucci (and cowriter Simon Blackwell), and a charmingly madcap elixir for the time of year that is in it. It just cartwheels along effortlessly, with the richness of the source material taking on an unrestrained quality while being lavished with affection by Iannucci.
Patel is a gorgeous epicentre for it all, playing it slightly straighter than the rest of the wonderful ensemble cast (Paul Whitehouse, Bronagh Gallagher and Benedict Wong all muck-in gamely too).
A beautiful hoot.