The Per­son­al His­to­ry of David Cop­per­field – first look review

Per­haps, giv­en the present state of things, it makes per­fect sense that Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci would want to take a small break from mak­ing satire. Although best asso­ci­at­ed with his pierc­ing polit­i­cal ripostes in the form of The Thick of It, In the Loop, and The Death of Stal­in, his lat­est out­ing as a film direc­tor takes a dif­fer­ent shape, as he adapts Charles Dick­ens’ once-seri­alised bil­dungsro­man David Cop­per­field into a hand­some dram­e­dy with an eclec­tic cast of British tal­ent, head­ed up by Dev Patel as the down-on-his-luck gen­tle­man who is forced to nav­i­gate dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances against the back­drop of Vic­to­ri­an London.

Patel, with his wide eyes and inef­fa­ble charm, is a per­fect choice for the title role, and deliv­ers some of his best-ever work in cap­tur­ing Copperfield’s mul­ti­tude of per­sonas, from hang­dog pau­per to aspir­ing gen­tle­man doing his best to keep his head above water. He wears his heart on his sleeve and his emo­tions writ­ten all over his face, as per­fect a choice for Cop­per­field as Col­in Firth for Jane Eyre’s Mr Darcy.

He is the film’s warm heart, a human Padding­ton Bear who believes sin­cere­ly in the good of the world despite his fre­quent hard­ships and the cast of notable eccentrics who flit in and out of his life. There’s Peter Capal­di as melo­dra­mat­ic (but ulti­mate­ly well-mean­ing) Wilkins Micaw­ber; Til­da Swin­ton as eccen­tric aunt Trot­wood; Hugh Lau­rie as the trou­bled, kite-fly­ing Mr Dick. Much is like­ly to be made of the film’s colour­blind cast­ing, but far from a gim­mick, it reflects the bright diver­si­ty that makes Britain what it is.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the film’s bright colour palette and flam­boy­ant cos­tume design blow the cob­webs away from any pre­con­cep­tion of Dick­ens as dour, per­haps ensur­ing the film is like­ly to become a sta­ple of school cur­ricu­lums for years to come. Ian­nuc­ci and co-writer Simon Black­well cher­ry pick and con­dense the sprawl­ing source mate­r­i­al, divid­ing Copperfield’s life more or less into chap­ters, as we fol­low him from idyl­lic youth to trou­bled ado­les­cence and adulthood.

There’s a bound­less, bois­ter­ous ener­gy and charm to pro­ceed­ings, trad­ing bit­ing sar­casm for glee­ful absur­dism. Although the source mate­r­i­al had its own polit­i­cal and satir­i­cal tones, Ianucci’s reimag­in­ing feels less con­cerned with that, instead opt­ing to filch from Dick­ens’ nov­el the por­traits of human nature, and more specif­i­cal­ly, their mul­ti­tude of com­plex­i­ties. No one – per­haps with the excep­tion of Ben Whishaw’s slith­er­ing Urea Heep – is ever sole­ly a vil­lain, or indeed a hero, even Copperfield.

It joins the ranks of Padding­ton 2 in this regard, both warm-heart­ed, bright­ly-coloured romps about the milk of human kind­ness, dis­tilled from stock notions of British­ness, such as a plucky deter­mi­na­tion to over­come adver­si­ty with­out los­ing one’s gen­tle man­ners in the process. Its light­ness might make it feel a lit­tle feath­er­weight to some, but with per­for­mances as charm­ing as these, it’s hard to not be enthralled all the same.