The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)
Directed by Armando Iannucci
A fresh and distinctive take on Charles Dickens’ semi-autobiographical masterpiece, The Personal History of David Copperfield, set in the 1840s, chronicles the life of its iconic title character as he navigates a chaotic world to find his elusive place within it. From his unhappy childhood to the discovery of his gift as a storyteller and writer, David’s journey is by turns hilarious and tragic, but always full of life, colour and humanity.
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What critics say influenced The Personal History of David Copperfield
Imagine his eyes widening, first in mystification and then with a dawning delight, at Magwitch in the moldy graveyard, in “Great Expectations” (1946); at the sight of the famished boys who troop to their benches and their gruel, at the start of “Oliver!” (1968), chanting “Food, Glorious Food”; and at the matchless Murdstone of Basil Rathbone, in “David Copperfield” (1935), whose hatchet face all but cleaves the screen as he prepares to thrash David like a dog.
The film lacks the atmosphere of David Lean's Great Expectations or the weighty iconography of any one of a number of Christmas Carol s, but a sincere affection for and understanding of the source material shines through in its wit and good nature.
In other words, pay attention, and who knew that the woman portraying a vampire in the “Underworld” series could wildly rule over a comical, sarcastic period piece.
Imagine his eyes widening, first in mystification and then with a dawning delight, at Magwitch in the moldy graveyard, in “Great Expectations” (1946); at the sight of the famished boys who troop to their benches and their gruel, at the start of “Oliver!” (1968), chanting “Food, Glorious Food”; and at the matchless Murdstone of Basil Rathbone, in “David Copperfield” (1935), whose hatchet face all but cleaves the screen as he prepares to thrash David like a dog.
Awarded the director’s first PG rating by the BBFC, it has more in common with Carol Reed’s 1968 family musical Oliver!
But movies adapted from Dickens — and there are too many to count — struggle with this dichotomy; perhaps the best evidence is “Oliver!” (1968), an upbeat Oscar-winning musical about starving orphans and whores getting beaten to death.
It tries to do for the Dickens classic what the Best Picture-winning musical Oliver! did for its somewhat more famous source material in 1968, offering a facelift to a story that might otherwise struggle to connect with younger audiences today while maintaining the playfulness that underlines much of Dickens’ book.
Compare this to Mira Nair’s 2003 film of Vanity Fair and Kenneth Branagh’s recent adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express , which both introduce Black characters into period settings and have the gumption to treat their race as an issue.
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The classic Dickens villains get the short shrift, but a raven-haired Gwendoline Christie proves what a more fitting casting choice she might have been as the Jessica Chastain character in Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015).
Eventually, the film leaps forward to Kelly as an adult (George MacKay from Captain Fantastic ), still trying to avoid becoming the desperado everyone in his life seems to be conspiring to turn him into.