The Personal History of David Copperfield

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Dev Patel in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

New this week – a dazzling literary adaptation, a profound social satire and a dreary slog. And check out my Best Movies of 2020.

I’ve also recently remembered 32 filmmakers that we lost in 2020:

  • 2020 Farewells: On the Screen (Part 1): Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery, Max von Sydow, Carl Reiner, Olivia de Havilland, Rhonda Fleming. Brian Dennehy, Fred Willard and Chadwick Boseman.
  • 2020 Farewells: On the Screen (Part 2): John Saxon, Ian Holm, Jerry Stiller, Allan Garfield, Michael Lonsdale, Ann Reinking, Stuart Whitman, Wilford Brimley, Sue Lyon, Jo Shishido, Little Richard, Linda Manz and John Benfield.
  • 2020 Farewells: Behind the Camera: Ennio Morricone, Buck Henry, Terry Jones, John le Carré, Lynne Shelton, Ivan Passer, Michael Chapman, Alan Parker, Joel Schumacher and Mike Cobb.

ON VIDEO

The Personal History of David Copperfield: That master of social satire, Amando Ianucci, brings Charles Dickins’ masterpiece to life in this vivid and brilliantly constructed film. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Another Round: Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg once again explores human foibles with humor and cold-eyed insight – and profoundly to boot. Mads Mikkelsen is stellar. I watched Another Round on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.

Ammonite: The fine acting of Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan can’t save Ammonite, a slog of a period romance. Streaming on Amazon.

And some more current films:

ON TV

Alec Guinness in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

On January 5, Turner Classic Movies presents David Lean’s WWII epic The Bridge on the River Kwai.  It’s the stirring story of British troops forced into slave labor at a cruel Japanese POW camp.  The British commander (Alec Guinness, in perhaps his most acclaimed performance) must walk the tightrope between giving his men enough morale to survive and helping the enemy’s war effort.  He has his match in the prison camp commander (Sessue Hayakawa), and these two men from conflicting values systems engage in a duel of wits – for life and death stakes.  William Holden plays an American soldier/scoundrel forced into an assignment that he really, really doesn’t want.  There’s also the stirringly unforgettable whistling version of the Colonel Bogey March. The climax remains one of the greatest hold-your-breath action sequences in cinema, even compared to all the CGI-aided ones in the  62 years since it was filmed.

Sessue Hayakawa in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD: Dickins alive at last

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Dev Patel in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

Here’s an unexpected treat: Amando Ianucci’s vivid and brilliantly constructed The Personal History of David Copperfield. Unexpected because I’ve never warmed to the work of Charles Dickins or to any Dickins movies (except for the 1951 A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim).

Of course David Copperfield IS a storyteller and Ianucci uses the device of David’s storytelling to frame the tale as David remembers it and as his readers and listeners imagine it in their own minds. Ianucci makes the highs in David’s life so vibrant and the lows so piercing, that the total package is a dazzling delight.

Dev Patel, he of the instantaneous appeal and the gleaming smile, is perfect as the quick-witted and charming David Copperfield. Patel’s David suffers grievance after grievance, just waiting for a moment of good luck when he can control his destiny.

That the talented David Copperfield, because of his station, cannot control his destiny in the class-constricted Victorian society is the whole point of David Copperfield, social criticism which Dickins keeps from stridency with his humor.

That’s prime territory for Armando Ianucci. Ianucci is a master of wickedly funny political satire, having directed In The Loop and Death of Stalin and created the television series Veep. (In case you want to know what I do on my day job, I am basically Malcom Tucker in In the Loop, whom you can find on YouTube.) Ianucci’s production designer, Cristina Casali, deserves a shout-out, too.

Peter Capaldi in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

It’s a wonderful cast, including Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie. The standouts are:

  • Laurie as the addled, but dignified, Mr. Dick.
  • Ben Whishaw as one of literature’s most distinctive villains, Uriah Heep.
  • Peter Capaldi (who played the aforementioned Malcom Tucker) as Mr. Micawber, a character modeled after Dickins’ own father.
  • Rosalind Eleazer as the even-smarrter-than-David Agnes.
  • Morfydd Clark as the sweetly vacant Dora Seamans.
  • Bronagh Gallagher (who played one of the backup singers in The Commitments) as the remarkably glass-half-full Mrs. Micawber.

Dickins wrote this story about white people in Victorian England. As is obvious with the casting of Patel as David, The Personal History of David Copperfield has an interracial cast, based on a premise that any actor can play any role. I’m okay with that, and I think as more directors cast their movies this way, the distracting aspects will evaporate for most viewers.

The Personal History of David Copperfield is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.