‘The Personal Life of David Copperfield’ or — A Somewhat Messy Existence ?

I didn’t know the story of David Copperfield going into ‘The Personal History of David Copperfield’ (2019) this evening. Unfortunately, coming out of the cinema tonight, I’m still not sure I know the story of David Copperfield because I found this adaptation, personally, a mess.

I’m a huge Armando Iannucci and have been for years; his influence on me, like on many other writers, is demonstrable. I also was looking forward to a work of his that didn’t rely quite so much on angry people shouting and swearing at each other and was a more representative of the man’s actual character containing a little more warmth and humanity. And you certainly do get that here with a superb cast giving heartfelt and humane performances.

What you also get is a rushed and confusing narrative that oscillates between boredom and contrived mania with huge chunks of story being seemingly condensed and frantically dished out, like being served a school-meal by a particularly impatient dinner lady or speed-reading and cramming the entire novel the night before an exam. So moments that need time to simmer instead fly by meaning that, by the end, I was actually confused as to what was going on, what was meant to be happening and what the entire point was. Who am I meant to be rooting for or wanting to happening just now? I had no clue.

I was also flummoxed by David Copperfield’s situation and finding myself throughout almost the entire movie having no genuine sense of when his fortunes were meant to be up or down, when he was doing well or not, with most of the time having Copperfield wandering about in rather nice clothes and mixing with all sorts of people that I couldn’t figure out when at what points he was meant to be poor or rich. And if you take that tension out of Dickens you’re kinda screwed.

Plus, amazingly for Iannucci, I was flabbergasted at how many of the jokes fell flat and, not only that, but just how many of the line and gags were obvious Iannucci-isms. Lacking the bite of his more satirical work it just felt like a lot of people talking over each other, usually with comedic ideas that get repeated almost to death (the ‘heavy cake’ gag gets a lot of mileage).

So yeah, I was surprisingly disappointed by ‘The Personal Life of David Copperfield’ and still have no idea as to what the entire thing is about. Although keep an ear out on the soundtrack towards the end where Iannucci has obviously told the composer to use John Adams’ ‘Harmonielehre’ as a reference point — it’s been a musical touchstone throughout almost all of Iannucci’s work, which isn’t a bad thing at all, so that’s something I guess.