"I want to show that the work of Charles Dickens isn't just quality entertainment for a long-dead audience," says Armando Iannucci at the outset of the low-key BBC documentary Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens, from 2012.
He continues: "I believe that the true Dickensian world is our world. Dickens speaks to us now."
This is an assertion not fully borne out by the Scottish satirist's adaptation of the book Dickens fondly referred to as his "favourite child".
The Personal History of David Copperfield is a sprightly and theatrical adaptation that serves up an ensemble of kooky characters better equipped to entertain than to offer any insights into 21st-century life.
Iannucci is well-practiced at skewering the politics and social mores of the moment — as evidenced by painfully sharp-witted and potty-mouthed shows like The Thick of It and Veep.
More recently, however, he has let his eye wander along history's timeline, expanding the scope of his comedy to encompass both the past (a territory first explored in 2017, with The Death of Stalin) and the future (which will be the setting of his forthcoming sci-fi series Avenue 5).
For now, Iannucci seems to have given up on tackling the present. (And really, given the state of things, who can blame him?)
Indeed, there are even signs that his characteristic cynicism may be softening: with its predominantly playful air and cheery colour palette, David Copperfield is more family-friendly than anything the writer-director has ever produced.
This may well be a boon for young'uns, but I'd wager it's something of a loss for those of us who are already full-grown, and partial to a few good stings in the tale.
The film's 'colour-blind' cast — because this is not the BBC's 19th-century England — is captained by Dev Patel (Lion; Slumdog Millionaire), who remains blandly endearing as the plucky and sweet-natured protagonist, according to whose account of his own maturation the story unfolds, from fatherless child (a role divided between Ranveer Jaiswal and Jairaj Varsani) to happily married man, via so many fateful pitfalls and windfalls.
Patel is backed by a number of actors with rather more protuberant funny bones: notably, Tilda Swinton as the severe but kindly Betsey Trotwood, David's great-aunt; Hugh Laurie as her shock-haired, moderately loopy housemate Mr Dick; and long-time Iannucci collaborator Peter Capaldi (a star of both The Thick of It and In the Loop) as the accordion-wielding Mr Micawber, with whom our hero resides as a working youth in London — a man whose oratorical eloquence is exceeded only by his debt.
The film opens as the book does: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," says David. But Iannucci positions him on a stage, addressing a plush theatre full of people from a lectern, and has him then turn and stroll right into the backdrop — one of the film's many such whimsical, self-reflexive transitions — off to bear witness to his own birth.
Iannucci's take on Dickens' lightly autobiographical bildungsroman is rendered with a wholehearted, and palpably well-informed, affection.
That the action has been rather streamlined, with however many subplots axed and a number of character arcs truncated, is certainly to have been expected, given the novel's formidable girth.
Rounding out the expansive cast are Ben Whishaw, who, bravely bowl-cutted, takes on the role of oily sycophant Uriah Heep; Benjamin Wong as Mr Wickfield, Betsey's lawyer, never not wondering if it's too early for a drink; and Rosalind Eleazar as his clever and considerate daughter Agnes Wickfield — on whom David's intense but peripatetic romantic attentions eventually come to rest.
In an Oedipal double bill, the promising Morfydd Clark (star of the recent A24 horror film Saint Maud) plays both David's dear mother and, later in the piece, the girlish Dora Spenlow, with whom the lad first becomes besotted — Clark here demonstrating a knack for off-kilter comedy with her well-tuned space-cadet routine.
Iannucci proves inventive in stitching together a cinematic version of this classic story, offering fresh sequences that blend quite nicely with those pre-existing, and repurposing choice bits of Dickens' dialogue with ease.
It's notable, however, that the director avoids dramatising the sticky ends owed to several characters.
Though no less sharp-tongued, and no less keen-eyed in its satire of the vicissitudes of class, and of fortune, Iannucci's is a somewhat gentler Copperfield than the original.
But, in the words of David's dashing school friend Steerforth (in response to an offer to tell a story about a family residing in an upturned boat): "I don't care for whimsy, sorry."
The Personal History of David Copperfield is in cinemas from July 2.
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2020-07-01 15:53:13Z
CAIiEHJaDiQio3NWwfHfv5AW0WMqFggEKg4IACoGCAow3vI9MPeaCDDciw4
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