What the DICKENS?
A thoroughly modern take on Charles’s tale is just the ticket
Think you’ve seen it all when it comes to big-screen adaptations of Charles Dickens books? Hard going, serious and, let’s be honest, a tad depressing? Then think again…
SET for release this Friday, The is ripping up the rule book and giving a unique, imaginative and funny take to the ultimate rags to riches novel – the author’s self-confessed ‘favourite child’.
Dev Patel takes on the role of the titular directed by Dickens-obsessive Armando Iannucci. The award-winning writer/ director of The Thick Of It, I’m Alan Partridge and The Death of Stalin has teamed up with frequent collaborator Simon Blackwell to employ his comedic mastery to bring to life the charismatic about his desire to break away from the adaptations, Iannucci says: ‘I want to show that the work of Charles Dickens isn’t just quality entertainment for a long-dead audience.’
FROM BIRTH TO ADULTHOOD
TELLING the story of the kind-hearted boy made good in Victorian England, it follows him from birth and infancy to adolescence and adulthood. Throughout it all he is surrounded by kindness, wickedness, poverty and wealth, as he meets an array of remarkable characters. And, as David sets out to be a writer, in his quest for family, friendship, romance and status, the story of his life is the most seductive tale of all, which audiences are set to fall in love with all over again.
the A-list map – and marks Hollywood’s serious consideration of colour-blind casting.
‘I’m not bored of it. I think wonderful things are happening. The fact that I get 29-year-old says. ‘It’s at the beginning of a movement, if you can call it that. You have got to talk about it to get some momentum, so it’s cool.’
And what a movement this movie has made – mainly in the star-studded cast. Dev is backed up by an abundance of the best of British actors, such as Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Ben Whishaw and Peter Capaldi, with all of them bringing their unique takes to some of literature’s most beloved characters, thanks to a sprinkling of Iannucci’s directional magic.
expected from Dickensian England, each hardship and tragedy is entwined with laughter and light relief – a real feeling that resonates with audiences as deeply today as it did almost 200 years ago. Blending highbrow and lowbrow and alternating between the intellectual and the absurd, Iannucci has revolutionised this story and has raised the bar for any future period adaptations.