The Personal History of David Copperfield (Film Review)

[selenak]

This was the first movie I saw in the cinema since February, and I've been curious about it for a year now. It's, as advertised, a breathless, fast paced, wildly inventive version of David Copperfield, directed by Armado Ianucci, with a great cast multiethnic cast (colourblind in the British stage sense, hence, for example, Nikki Amuka-Bird as Mrs. Steerforth - who in this version is an amalgan of herself and Rosa Dartle - and Aneurin Barnard as her son).



In practically every interview I'd seen at the time this was released in Britain last year, our director emphasizes wanting to do justice to the hilarity of Dickens (something lost in some other adaptions), with the scene of drunk David (Dev Patel) at the theatre running into Agnes being a prime example.

This intention certainly was fulfilled, though in order to keep the lighthearted tone throughout, Iannucci had to ignore several of the novel's deaths and trust that the great speed of the film makes it impossible for the audience to linger on just how awful some of the events are. For example: in the novel, the destruction of David's carefree early childhood happens in several steps. First the psychoterror by stepdad Murdstone (and here what makes it extra awful is what Mr. Murdstone does to David's mother in addition to David, gaslighting her and terrorizing her and destroying every bit of self worth sense she has), then David gets send to his first school, then his mother dies, then he ends up at the bottle factory (and meets the Micawbers etc.), then he goes to Dover and ends up with his aunt. In the movie, the image of Mr. Murdstone's hand coming down on the paper house that the Peggottys' boat house is suddenly revealed at already sums up what will happen to David's home and life. We get the "teaching" scene, the beating, but then immediately fast foward to David being sent to the bottle factory (no first school interlude, which is why David won't meet Steerforth until he's already Dev Patel shaped) and meets the Micawbers. Mr. Micawber is played by Peter Capaldi in hilarious form, and the comedy of him avoiding his creditors dispenses with the lingering horror of home life a la Murdstone; even the child labor at the bottle factory is more picturesque than anything else. (Though Ianucci will get into the long term effect of this in a way that's not in the novel but very much in the life of Charles Dickens, more about this in a moment.) The two people who still die in the film are David's mother and Steerforth, but not Ham, nor Dora. Dora, breaking the fourth wall, asks David to write her out of the story since she "doesn't fit" instead. I guess if you haven't read the book, you take this to mean she and David break up gently, having figured out in time their marriage would be a mistake. As opposed David realising this after the marriage, and while Dora conveniently dies, giving Agnes and David to each other on her deathbed, she doesn't die until that realisation as well and truly hit home. So on the one hand, this is definitely David Copperfield: The Fluffy Edition.

On the other, Iannucci does something more than rearrange the material the novel gives him so it fits in two hours screen time. David Copperfield the novel is more overtly autobiographical than anything else Dickens wrote, but it still is a novel, not a roman à clef, with the differences between Dickens and David as strong as the similarities. Charles Dickens: very much not an orphan. By splitting his parents into the ghastly Murdstones and the lovable Micawbers, he ensures that David can loathe the former and love the later without any ambiguity in either case, to name just one key difference. However, Iannuci's film, which emphasizes David being a writer far more than any other version I've seen, including the novel itself, uses elements from Dickens' life not in the book to flesh David out as a character. Starting, of course, with the very beginning, which is David saying the famous first line of the novel as part of a public reading he does, the way Dickens did (and made a great success of it). The bottle factory episode in David's life is painful to him while he lives through it in the book, but when it's over, he doesn't feel any lingering shame. Charles Dickens, on the other hand, felt intense shame over having worked at a bottle factory as a child, he could not pass the shop as an adult man and took another road to avoid it, he couldn't bring himself to tell his wife about it (even when things were good), and when he did try to write an actual autobiography, he didn't get much further than this episode before breaking it off and writing David Copperfield instead.

This intense, very much class related shame that Dickens felt and David in the novel did not once he was no longer there is given to David in the movie. And that factors directly into his relationship with Uriah Heep, even before Heep tries to blackmail him with it. Incidentally, I'd never have thought of Ben Wishaw for this part, but he's terrific in it. Iannucci's take on David and Uriah feels like he's read George Orwell's Dickens essay, in addition to adding his own spin on it. It's very much a "Uriah embodies all I dislike in myself" alter ego thing since the movie's David never quite recovers that sense of identity lost when he was put in the factory and feels like a social climbing con man himself as opposed to a "true gentleman" when he's back among the wealthy. (Sidenote: in previous incarnations, I could never get into David/Uriah, not least because David is still a child when meeting Uriah and is nothing but creeped out and disgusted by him. Otoh, in the movie they're already Patel and Wishaw when meeting, which removes that factor.) The film is also more on Uriah Heep's side than any other version, stating with an eager to fit in again with the wealthy teenage schoolboys David employing his talent for impersonation (again, something Charles Dickens - an enthusiastic amateur actor who performed his novels more than he read them - had, but novel!David Coppperfield doesn't as far as I recall) to deliver a performance of Uriah, and while Steerforth and the other youths laugh we see Uriah in the background. Nor is his accent as over the top as in the other versions I've seen. He's still a ruthless social climber (and criminal), but he's not grotesque anymore. (And now I could see David/Uriah hatesex for these versions.)

Speaking of the talent to impersonate, another trait of Charles Dickens given to the movie's David is the constant noting down interesting phrases he hears, the being in love with language, and that, the movie connects with Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie in a radiant performance), so often just a bit of (additional) comic relief at Betsey Trotwood's, whereas here his mental illness comes across as another version of David's obsessions without a creative outlet. The kite flying is such an emotional release, and it also showcases David being kind in the best way. When David near the end of the film starts to write the book we're in, which he narrates on stage, we hear fragments from Dickens' novel again, showcasing him/Dickens as a masterful wordsmith. The film thus is about David becoming not the hero but the writer of his own life, or a writer in general, in a way the novel is not.

Even Mr. Micawber is used in connection to this general theme. Orwell in his essay critisizes that Dickens in the end makes Micawber turns over a new leaf and reform by emigrating to Australia with the Peggotys and becoming respectable. The movie's Micawber does not; in his last scene, he asks David for a loan again, thus, like Dickens' own father (who was in and out of debtor's prison constantly through Dickens' childhood and when Charles had become a famous writer, wasn't above forging his signature), remaing incorrigable. But the connection between con man and writer - which John Le Carré drew for himself and his own con man father in his memoirs published a few years ago - is there though the film, with adult David catching himself at starting to use the same excuses Micawber did to get out of tight spots (and most embarrasingly, Uriah Heep catches him at it, too). And by making Micawber (trying his hand at impersonation) the lower class teacher Steerforth humiliates at Strong's school by using information David has unwittingly given him earlier, this episode gets deeply personal for the Micawber-liking audience, which I thought was cleverly done. My one complaint re: Mr. Micawber is that his moment of supreme glory is no longer there, because he doesn't temporarily align with Heep. Thus, he can't the day by uncovering the proof that Heep has been responsible for Aunt Betsey's financial ruin and Mr. Wickfield's decline; instead, this is given to Agnes, presumably to give her more agency.

Lastly: having written David Copperfield fanfiction about her for Yuletide two years ago, I was curious how the film would deal (if at all) with Emily. First of all, during the childhood part, she's already a teenager when David is still a child, age wise between him and Ham. They play with each other, but there's no indication David crushes on her; instead, at the end of his first stay with the Pegottys, she already becomes engaged to Ham. (And then has apparently a ten years engagement, because she's still engaged when David brings Steerforth for a visit.) Otoh, within limited screen time, Emily's dream of being a lady is made clear while the movie roots her more physically than the novel does in her world of origin (we meet her when she's cleaning fish, and her hands are marked by hard work), and it's clear what happens when Steerforth shows up. Since I had reread the Emily passages for Yuletide in 2017, it had struck me then that even before Steerforth, the book makes it very clear Emily doesn't really want to marry Ham, she's doing it for her uncle and because everyone expects her to, but that Ham really is like a brother to her, and I wasn't sure whether that came across in the film, but never mind, it's a subplot. One thing I regretted was that Dev Patel and Aneurin Barnard - imo, as always - had no chemistry, because even teenage me when reading the novel thought there was a strong vibe between Steerforth and David and without homoerotic subtext, that relationship (and David being wilfully blind for a long time re: Steerforth's dark side, and even afterwards having strong feelings for him) doesn't really work. But: chemistry is in the eyes of the beholder.

Let's see, what else: I liked Rosalind Eleazar as Agnes, being so charming and radiant and confidant that it's a mystery why not everyone falls for her. Morfydd Clark does double duty as David's mother and Dora Spenlow - which makes even more sense in the novel because they are really a lot alike, which makes for an uncomfortable moment when David tries to teach Dora to be more practical and you suddenly remember Mr. Murdstone and his behaviour with David's mother - and the "write me out, Doady" moment has unexcpected subtle pathos if you are aware of Dickens' own private life and Dora's fate in the novel. Tilda Swinton makes for a great Betsey Trotwood, though I very much regret that her squaring off againsts the Murdstones does not happen in tihis film since this is my favourite Betsey Trotwood scene in the book. (It doesn't happen because David is no longer a child, he's a late teenager by the time he ends up with Aunt Betsey in the movie, and has just squared off against the Murdstones.)

In conclusion: great fun, very clever, and at times made me wish Iannucci would tackle Dickens himself in a biopic.

Comments

Mr. Micawber's Crowning Moment of Awesome (1)

[selenak]

I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have
done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by
Mr. Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I
thought; and had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her
earnest cordiality, and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler
lustre for it.

I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of
an ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the
meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and
Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out.

'Don't wait, Micawber,' said Uriah.

Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood
erect before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his
fellow-men, and that man his employer.

'What are you waiting for?' said Uriah. 'Micawber! did you hear me
tell you not to wait?'

'Yes!' replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.

'Then why DO you wait?' said Uriah.

'Because I - in short, choose,' replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.

Uriah's cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still
faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at
Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and
quick in every feature.

'You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,' he said,
with an effort at a smile, 'and I am afraid you'll oblige me to get
rid of you. Go along! I'll talk to you presently.'

'If there is a scoundrel on this earth,' said Mr. Micawber,
suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, 'with whom
I have already talked too much, that scoundrel's name is - HEEP!'

Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly
round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his
face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:

'Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You
are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take
care. You'll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you
and me. There's no love between us. You were always a puppy with
a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my
rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I'll counterplot you!
Micawber, you be off. I'll talk to you presently.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'there is a sudden change in this fellow.
in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the
truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to
bay. Deal with him as he deserves!'

'You are a precious set of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the
same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped
from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk,
who is the very scum of society, - as you yourself were,
Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you, - to
defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this;
or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I
won't know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss
Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not
join that gang. I'll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got
some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over
you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don't want to be crushed.
I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently,
you fool! while there's time to retreat. Where's mother?' he said,
suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles,
and pulling down the bell-rope. 'Fine doings in a person's own
house!'

'Mrs. Heep is here, sir,' said Traddles, returning with that worthy
mother of a worthy son. 'I have taken the liberty of making myself
known to her.'

'Who are you to make yourself known?' retorted Uriah. 'And what do
you want here?'

'I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,' said Traddles,
in a composed and business-like way. 'And I have a power of
attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.'

'The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,' said Uriah,
turning uglier than before, 'and it has been got from him by
fraud!'

'Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,' returned
Traddles quietly; 'and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that
question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.'

'Ury -!' Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

'YOU hold your tongue, mother,' he returned; 'least said, soonest
mended.'

'But, my Ury -'

'Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?'

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his
pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of
the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off.
The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it
was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed;
the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he
had done - all this time being desperate too, and at his wits' end
for the means of getting the better of us - though perfectly
consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me
by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so
heartily.

I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing
us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated
me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when
his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt
his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their
disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire
to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was
shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within
sight of such a man.

After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking
at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one
more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.

'You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride
yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak
about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been ME,
I shouldn't have wondered; for I don't make myself out a gentleman
(though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according
to Micawber), but being you! - And you're not afraid of doing this,
either? You don't think at all of what I shall do, in return; or
of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very
well. We shall see! Mr. What's-your-name, you were going to refer
some question to Micawber. There's your referee. Why don't you
make him speak? He has learnt his lesson, I see.'

Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat
on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of
his splay feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for
what might follow.

Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the
greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the
first syllable Of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now
burst forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a
defensive weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap
document, folded in the form of a large letter. Opening this
packet, with his old flourish, and glancing at the contents, as if
he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition,
he began to read as follows:

'"Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen -"'

'Bless and save the man!' exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. 'He'd
write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!'

Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.

'"In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate
Villain that has ever existed,"' Mr. Micawber, without looking off
the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah
Heep, '"I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my
cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to
respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing
circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have,
collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career."'

The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to
these dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis
with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered
to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a
sentence very hard indeed.

'"In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I
entered the office - or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would
term it, the Bureau - of the Firm, nominally conducted under the
appellation of Wickfield and - HEEP, but in reality, wielded by -
HEEP alone. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the mainspring of that
machine. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the Forger and the Cheat."'

Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the
letter, as if to tear it in pieces. Mr. Micawber, with a perfect
miracle of dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with
the ruler, and disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist,
as if it were broken. The blow sounded as if it had fallen on
wood.

'The Devil take you!' said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain.
'I'll be even with you.'

'Approach me again, you - you - you HEEP of infamy,' gasped Mr.
Micawber, 'and if your head is human, I'll break it. Come on, come
on! '

I think I never saw anything more ridiculous - I was sensible of
it, even at the time - than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards
with the ruler, and crying, 'Come on!' while Traddles and I pushed
him back into a corner, from which, as often as we got him into it,
he persisted in emerging again.

His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand
for sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up;
then held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his
sullen face looking down.

Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his
letter.

'"The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered
into the service of - HEEP,"' always pausing before that word and
uttering it with astonishing vigour, '"were not defined, beyond the
pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week. The rest was
left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other
and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the
cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral
(or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and - HEEP. Need I
say, that it soon became necessary for me to solicit from - HEEP -
pecuniary advances towards the support of Mrs. Micawber, and our
blighted but rising family? Need I say that this necessity had
been foreseen by - HEEP? That those advances were secured by
I.O.U.'s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal
institutions of this country? And that I thus became immeshed in
the web he had spun for my reception?"'

Mr. Micawber's enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing
this unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any
pain or anxiety that the reality could have caused him. He read
on:

'"Then it was that - HEEP - began to favour me with just so much of
his confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal
business. Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly
express myself, to dwindle, peak, and pine. I found that my
services were constantly called into requisition for the
falsification of business, and the mystification of an individual
whom I will designate as Mr. W. That Mr. W. was imposed upon, kept
in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible way; yet, that all
this while, the ruffian - HEEP - was professing unbounded gratitude
to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused gentleman. This
was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes, with that
universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious
ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!"'

Mr. Micawber was so very much struck by this happy rounding off
with a quotation, that he indulged himself, and us, with a second
reading of the sentence, under pretence of having lost his place.

'"It is not my intention,"' he continued reading on, '"to enter on
a detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though
it is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor
nature, affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to
which I have been a tacitly consenting party. My object, when the
contest within myself between stipend and no stipend, baker and no
baker, existence and non-existence, ceased, was to take advantage
of my opportunities to discover and expose the major malpractices
committed, to that gentleman's grievous wrong and injury, by -
HEEP. Stimulated by the silent monitor within, and by a no less
touching and appealing monitor without - to whom I will briefly
refer as Miss W. - I entered on a not unlaborious task of
clandestine investigation, protracted - now, to the best of my
knowledge, information, and belief, over a period exceeding twelve
calendar months."'

He read this passage as if it were from an Act of Parliament; and
appeared majestically refreshed by the sound of the words.

'"My charges against - HEEP,"' he read on, glancing at him, and
drawing the ruler into a convenient position under his left arm, in
case of need, '"are as follows."'

We all held our breath, I think. I am sure Uriah held his.