The Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci, 2019) (Patreon)

Highly frustrating as an idea, Iannucci's Copperfield is unavoidably entertaining. This is because he and co-writer Simon Blackwell appear to be targeting the entire history of BBC prestige productions, with their prim tone and stately pace. And it's true, these sorts of British literary adaptations have become a kind of genre unto themselves, often feeling far more arduous than simply reading the books themselves, which in most cases have the benefit of authorial style.

By contrast, Iannucci is going for a kind of cinematic speed-read of Dickens, and the result occasionally feels a bit like a Victorian Amélie. There's certainly no question that The Personal History of David Copperfield reflects a particular "take" on Dickens, and your sympathy with the film will partly be determined by whether you the viewer, like Iannucci and Blackwell, consider nonstop hurtling incident (as opposed to atmosphere, or dense curlicues of language) to be the defining characteristic of this author.

Now, I've never read Copperfield. The only Dickens I've read is Oliver Twist, nearly thirty years ago. So a Dickens expert I am assuredly not. But this film seems to have the need for speed in part because of a particular denigration of Dickens that happens sometime in the 1980s: that he was a writer paid by the word, and that his novels were cracking tales weighed down by needless verbiage. To Iannucci's credit, this Copperfield uses the protagonist-as-writer trope to allow for the introduction of some of the novel's poetically pungent turns of phrase, sometimes even appearing on screen as collected scraps of paper.

But this only emphasizes the clever-clever postmodern conceit at the heart of Personal History. In a kind of recognition, partly winking and partly shrugging, that cinematic adaptations of classic literary properties usually serve as Cliffs Notes for students who didn't do the homework, this film unfurls Copperfield's plot as efficiently as possible, while also providing the viewer-cheater with enough of a flavor for Dickens' writerly style to potentially pass the exam.

If I am selling Iannucci and Blackwell short, it may be because this particular self-aware trope of the adaptation-as-problem has been tackled before with far greater intelligence by, of all people, Michael Winterbottom, in his Tristram Shandy film A Cock and Bull Story. Granted, Laurence Sterne not only lends himself to this kind of gamesmanship; he practically demands it.

Still, Personal History's obtrusively multicultural cast, which is clearly intended to signify humorous anachronism and little else, strikes me as, shall we say, "interesting." It's a choice that indemnifies the filmmakers against charges of making another boring old British costume drama, but it doesn't really ask us to consider race or ethnicity (or colonialism, which seems relevant here). And yet, this action, which is so glib and meaningless, can neatly serve as a snare for the critic who points it out. Why should everything be about race? Isn't it wonderful to have colorblind casting? Etc. And while Dev Patel is indeed a bona fide movie star and I certainly take no issue with his wide-eyed, passive-template performance, Copperfield rings hollow. It's an intellectual parlor trick.