A New Film Version of 'David Copperfield' That’s Perfect For This Dark Winter

We deserve something good this year, don’t we? Well, it's here - The Personal History of David Copperfield is finally available to stream or rent on most video on-demand platforms.

Taking on Charles Dickens’s longest and most autobiographical novel with its cast of grotesques and eccentrics and its many plot lines has to be a daunting prospect for a film-maker, but director Armando Iannucci (The Death of Stalin, The Thick of It ) knocks it out of the park. Not only do his cuts, necessary to transform this dense novel into a two-hour film, mostly work, but this is an extraordinarily entertaining and creative piece of film-making, giving a new spin and a new look to a historical drama.

Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) gives a brilliant performance as David Copperfield, combining comedy with likability, and heads up a tremendously talented, racially diverse ensemble cast.

The film opens with the adult David Copperfield reading the famous opening lines of the novel to a theater audience (Dickens became famous for his public readings). He strides off the stage through the backdrop, across a field to a house, where he hovers anxiously over his mother as she prepares to give birth—to him.

David’s memories and speculations and fantasies appear visually—walls fall away, images are projected like a movie within a movie. It’s a visual treat, with brightness and color galore, exuberant patterns and clashing hues. London is portrayed as a vibrantly diverse city full of energy, and even the bottling factory where the young David (Jairaj Varsani) is sent to work has a sort of hectic, crazy choreography.