What the Dickens?
David Copperfield is a fabulous feel-good hit
★★★★★
Dir Armando Iannucci
Starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Jairaj Varsani, Hugh Laurie, Ben Whishaw, Peter Capaldi, Daisy May Cooper, Paul Whitehouse, Rosalind Eleazar, Aneurin Barnard, Morfydd Clark, Benedict Wong
Afew years before he died, Charles Dickens wrote: “Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.” Dickens’s affection for his eighth novel surely stemmed in part from the fact its hero’s story ran close to his own. Both toiled as children in factories, fell in love with pretty young women above their station, eventually made their livings from words, and had fathers, or father figures, who struggled with debt. For two men of letters, it feels apt that each one’s initials were the other’s mirror image.
This rollicking screen adaptation from master satirist Armando Iannucci suggests what Dickens himself might have felt: that our best hope of making sense of life is writing it down. The Personal History of David Copperfield barrels along like a farce, with characters bustling in and out like guests in the Fawlty Towers lobby.
David himself – adorably played as a boy by Jairaj Varsani and with consummate sparkle and charm as a young man by Dev Patel – could almost be hovering behind reception, the unflappable Polly trying to keep track of the comings and goings.
You’d be hard pressed to draw up a more pleasing guest list. Tilda Swinton offers a shiver of surrealism to the eccentric Betsey Trotwood. Ben Whishaw’s Uriah Heep is a kind of a wilted leek in human form. Peter Capaldi brings a dishevelled nobility to Mr Micawber that calls to mind the great Alastair Sim. And Hugh Laurie is just treasurable as Mr Dick.
Faced with this lot, David is inspired to write – jotting down quotes and observations he will later piece together into the Personal History of the title. He is continually defined by the nicknames others bestow on him: to Betsey he’s Trot, a generic descendant, while Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard), his schoolmate, sees him as a delicate Daisy. To his beloved Dora (Morfydd Clark), he’s Doady: a cute pet to be snuggled, like her lapdog Jip. It’s only through his own words that David is able to explain to the world – and himself – who he actually is.
Ingeniously, the film opens at this very moment: a public reading of David’s autobiography. But then he is back in rural Suffolk, striding up to Blunderstone Rookery to witness his own birth. Notably, his mother – also played by Clark, in an intriguing piece of double casting – is white.
Yes, the ensemble cast has enough multicultural credentials to give Laurence Fox a fit of the vapours. The effect is jarring, but pleasantly so – who wouldn’t want a film culture enriched with Rosalind Eleazar’s forbearing yet impish Agnes, Nikki Amuka-bird’s imperious Mrs Steerforth, or Benedict Wong’s sozzled Mr Wickfield?
And while Iannucci stops short of using it to explore the book’s themes in new ways – David’s precarious social standing isn’t connected to his South Asian heritage – it brings new vibrancy and commotion to the period drama palette.
So, too, does Iannucci’s and Simon Blackwell’s screenplay, which trims away extraneous characters and sub-plots with such aerodynamic finesse, the script feels like it might have been tested in a wind tunnel.
Favourite characters’ catchphrases have been cut, but their spirits are boisterously intact.
The 170-year-old text is also skilfully sifted for new grace notes, and the new jokes are worthy of the source material, too.
Few would have anticipated such warmth and playfulness at this moment from the director of The Death of Stalin and creator of The Thick of It, the most excoriating political satire of the age.
But there is something wonderfully unexpected – and dare I even say subversive? – in responding to our fraught times with a film in which wit and goodness win through in the end.