Charles Dickens, you’ve heard of him? I’ll tell you now that I’ve never read Dickens,
so went into this with just the postcard-sized info on the man, the sort of pop cultural
osmosis knowledge you get about a figure from watching Muppets versions of their work. Indeed
my only understanding of David Copperfield comes from the BBC miniseries that Daniel
Radcliffe did in the late 90s; I would have been about 8 when I watched it, so don’t
look to me for judging textural accuracy.
But textual accuracy and this film have a curious relationship. It’ll no doubt draw
a lot of interest- and attack- for prominently featuring people of colour in main roles,
not least Dev Patel as Copperfield himself. It’s not the slightly awkward ‘how do
we explain this’ casting style either- director Armando Ianucci and casting director Sarah
Crowe have decided to completely ignore any sort of justification. There are white characters
with black mums and vice versa.
It fits well with a general approach of irreverence and post-modernity that will come as no surprise
to viewers familiar with Ianucci’s other work like The Death of Stalin, Alan Partridge
and Time Trumpet.
The movie begins with Copperfield reading his life story to a gathered audience in a
playhouse; the scenery becomes the film as it starts, with Copperfield’s birth narrated
by him in person.
A carriage bursts into his bedroom to transition into another scene; his idyllic early childhood
is interrupted by a hand crashing through the ceiling, becoming a pencil sketch taken
away and scrunched up. Even the dialogue does it; characters mock each others (very) Dickensian
names.
These post-modern touches encourage the viewer to approach what might be viewed as a sacred
text in a more lively way, and also open up the story to some moments of absurd humour.
The flip-side of this is that the dialogue can often be quite bald; it explains things
very plainly, and combined with frequent wide shots and lots of mids (all the better for
improvising, i assume) it can feel a bit simple, a little childish.
It’s not aided by the very episodic structure early on, where Copperfield is shuttled from
weird character to weird character, each of whom is played by a well-known British actor
(admittedly all doing pretty good work). As I understand it, that’s not really Ianucci’s
fault; after all, Dickens was basically writing as he went along, and for serialisation too;
have to keep the audience hooked!
Unfortunately it makes it hard to care about the story, or Copperfield’s fortunes, until
the plot settles down in the second half. It just feels a bit rushed, and that’s exacerbated
by plenty of comedic rushing- you know, where actors run about to do a big funny, as if
more speed might make the laughs louder.
All in all, this is a clever and quite radical adaptation; Ianucci and writer Simon Blackwell
make a few big changes to the story that interact with and are justified by their interesting
post-modern conceits. The casting of people of colour in lead roles also lends another
angle to some of the themes of the story; in particular, Copperfield’s changing identity
as he is named and renamed has some interesting additional dimensions.
Unfortunately, in my book a movie can be very very interesting and still not good. I think
there’s plenty to like in the film, but it’s by no means a classic. Still- would
be great to have more radical period films and classic lit adaptations; Dickens is a
good place to start, as he was a pretty radical writer in his time.
That’s it from me, but I’d love to hear what you thought in the comments below. Let’s
chat about weird period films and clever adaptations (this reminded me a lot of Winterbottom’s
Tristram Shandy from a decade back), or about this film in general. Have a good one, bye
for now.