Film

Armando Iannucci's David Copperfield adaption is brilliantly inclusive

Dickens' story is very funny in The Thick of It mastermind's hands with a bonus of wonderful casting

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Theatre has been doing ‘colour-blind casting’ for years, but until now film has had a ‘keep out’ sign on the door, barring actors of colour from appearing in bonnet and breeches dramas. Now, with his inclusive Dickens adaptation The Personal History of David Copperfield, Armando Iannucci cheerfully sticks two fingers up at the backward-looking tradition of all-white casting. The ethnicity of the actors in the film is completely irrelevant. Which gives us the heaven-sent casting of Dev Patel, a Londoner of Indian heritage, as Copperfield. I can’t think anyone better suited to Copperfield, an orphan making his way in the world and finding himself as a man, than Patel, an actor with a puppy dog-warm screen presence. Though he is very nearly eclipsed by pint-sized moppet Jairaj Varsani, who portrays Copperfield as a small boy with irresistible mischief; he’s not on screen for nearly enough time. 

That, in a nutshell, is my beef with this David Copperfield. The script by Iannucci and Simon Blackwell snips and clips away at the story, cutting to the dramatic quick with the precision of an expensive Japanese knife, blade glinting. It’s a briskly-paced, good-natured adaptation, but left me with a pang for the novel’s richly enjoyable detail, the shades of feeling, its emotional ache for an unhappy boyhood.

It opens with Copperfield (Patel) as a young man, a successful novelist reading from his autobiography on stage before literally walking into scenes of his early life. We see him as a bystander at his own birth, watching his mother, young widow Clara Copperfield (Morfydd Clark) in labour. When she marries abusive Mr Murdstone (Darren Boyd), young Copperfield is humiliatingly put to work at a bottle factory (as Dickens himself was at 11). Peter Capaldi is Mr Micawber, the lad’s feckless London landlord, a man in a constant state of financial embarrassment. As a teenager, Copperfield runs away to his eccentric aunt Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton, wonderful). Ben Whishaw is that great villain Uriah Heep, revoltingly obsequious and ever so humble. Whishaw plays him so well you can almost see smarmy Heep leaving grease marks on the furniture. 

It’s perhaps churlish to complain about a film with Dickens’ famous characters played to such perfection by a premier-league cast. And this really is an intelligently adapted and bracingly modern period drama. The script corrects Dickens’ fondness for an insipid female character; Copperfield’s true love Agnes (Rosalind Eleazar) has become the prime mover in uncovering loathsome Heep’s heinous crimes. Even drippy Dora, another love interest, is funnier and wiser. Still, the film is in a constant rush, cantering along, often switching to a gallop. I longed it to slow to a trot. As Dickens himself wrote in the novel: “Trifles are the sum of life.”

Still, it’s a very funny film, and the casting is brilliant. The inclusivity doesn’t feel at all odd or jarring. The white Welsh actor Aneurin Barnard is Copperfield’s swaggering boyhood friend Steerforth while Nikki Amuka-Bird, a Nigerian-Brit, portrays his mother, arrogant Mrs Steerforth. They play the dysfunctional emeshed mother-son relationship beautifully. Now that the glass ceiling has been smashed, more casting like this please.

The Personal History of David Copperfield is in cinemas now

Support the Big Issue

For over 30 years, the Big Issue has been committed to ending poverty in the UK. In 2024, our work is needed more than ever. Find out how you can support the Big Issue today.
Vendor martin Hawes

Recommended for you

View all
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review – a heartfelt and 'nostalgia-tickling' sequel
Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Film

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review – a heartfelt and 'nostalgia-tickling' sequel

The Beautiful Game: Everything you need to know about Netflix's new Homeless World Cup film
Colin Farrell with the Scottish team, holding a football
Homeless World Cup

The Beautiful Game: Everything you need to know about Netflix's new Homeless World Cup film

Robot Dreams director Pablo Berger on grief, loss and the Oscars underdog winning hearts everywhere
Dog is baffled by the assembly instructions for his new robot pal in Robot Dreams
Film

Robot Dreams director Pablo Berger on grief, loss and the Oscars underdog winning hearts everywhere

Banel & Adama creator Ramata-Toulaye Sy on why Africa is so much more than its tragedies
Ramata-Toulaye Sy
Film

Banel & Adama creator Ramata-Toulaye Sy on why Africa is so much more than its tragedies

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Here's when UK households to start receiving last cost of living payments
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Here's when UK households to start receiving last cost of living payments

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know
4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know