‘The Personal History of David Copperfield‘, the 2019 version of Dickens’ famous novel, directed by Armando Iannucci, will baffle a lot of people, and is likely to be equally criticised by those who should praise it and praised by those who do not expect to like it. What is already clear is that we are dealing with the most original film version of this story that has ever been made. Hard Dickens fans who believe that historical fiction should be as close as possible to the times and that fidelity to the letter of the book is important will probably be outraged. Fans of Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton and other great actors who are part of the cast will be happy to see them on screen in roles that they obviously played with pleasure, but may object in the end that the talent of their favorites was wasted for colourful but superficial roles. Those who have a good chance of liking the film are the spectators who are looking for original ideas, no matter how crazy, and there are enough of these in this unusual adaptation of Dickens, from the vaudeville atmosphere to the multi-ethnic cast which seems to have been built up to meet the recent Academy requirements for the Best Movie award (valid from 2024), although the distribution and execution of the film were completed before 2019. The result is a fun and chaotic film, which is likely to be disliked by some, to become cult film for others, or simply to bore the blasé.
The story is well known, at least to those who have read the novel. The more than 600 pages of the book that tell the melodramatic story of the orphaned child who is sent by his stepfather to the severe schools and then to the exploitative factories of mid-19th century England, followed by the coming of age and confrontation of young David Copperfield (Dev Patel) with a destiny full of ups and downs, are concentrated in less than two hours of screening using the pretext of a conference combined with a theatrical performance. The memories of the grown up David are transformed with the versatility of a magic wand of the illusionist who borrowed the name of Dickens’ hero in a version of comic theater, in which the stage convention is combined with the effects of cinematography, an art that would be invented only half century later. However, the stage-screen convention allows the smooth absorption of the eccentric casting proposed by Armando Iannucci. A stage director has much more freedom than a film director in proposing his own vision of the world and of the literary work he adapts, the versions for the stage not having to obey the rules of visual that apply to movies.
The resulting comic effect consists of the permanent comparison that the spectator familiar with the book makes between the characters as we know them and their incarnations on the screen. Especially true for the supporting roles. Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi, Ben Whishaw play their respective roles with visible pleasure and add nice versions (but no more) to the on-screen character galleries that preceded them (on a movie blog I saw a list of 21 screen adaptations before this one). Dev Patel is a charismatic actor that one can’t help but sympathise with, but he didn’t seem to resonate in this film with any of the young women Dickens said he was in love with. What I found less successful in this screening was the narrative flow: events follow one another at an accelerated pace but something in the passage of cinematic time does not work. The result is that we do not have enough time to grieve for the blows of fate, nor to rejoice when the wheel of fortune turns in favor of the heroes. In addition, the costumes, colourful and fancy look good on the screen, but do not always reflect the psychological and economic condition of the heroes (an example – Mr. Micawber and family to be clean and polished even when they end up living on the street). The message of social critique of the expanding English capitalism in Dickens’s novel is almost completely lost, its place is taken by the picturesque and character comedy. I think that this film will especially please those who have read the book in case that they are not outraged by the lack of adherence to the text, and the many admirers of the good actors in the cast, but for those unfamiliar with the story watching will be quite confusing. It is the most original screenplay of ‘David Copperfield’, but one that can excite or disappoint. Future spectators should consider themselves warned.