The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) Review

Last year I read David Copperfield for the first time, and I laughed, I cried, it moved me, Bob. (You can read a blow-by-blow of my thoughts on each chapter if you want. *waves hand in direction of David Copperfield tag*) Naturally I intend to watch at least a few movie versions of DC, but so far I’ve only seen the recent 2019 The Personal History of David Copperfield. (I’ve also seen the first few minutes of the 2000 TV version, but to be perfectly honest I got a little bored during the opening credits in which it felt like a Very Long Time was being spent just watching Hugh Dancy wandering around, and I haven’t ventured back to finish it.)

I think it would be fair to say that of all the ‘normal’ adaptations of David Copperfield (as opposed to modern retellings or twist-versions – if there are any of DC; I admit I haven’t looked into that), PHoDC is the least normal. It’s trying to do something different with the source material than simply to re-tell it in film format.

I’ve seen others compare PHoDC to the 2020 Emma stylistically, and I think that’s fair. Both are trying to bring out the quirkiness of the story, which I think could potentially work well for Dickens – Dickens does absolutely have a sense of humor and a lot of funny and quirky characters, and David Copperfield is no exception to that. Whether I think it worked in this particular iteration remains to be seen.

I’ll start by talking about the characters/actors, since that’s how I usually start movie reviews and I’m a creature of habit. (Also, I manage to avoid spoilers for the most part (and mark it when I don’t), so if you haven’t read/seen it you can venture forward in comparative safety!)

David Copperfield is what I’d call a reasonably important character in this story entitled David Copperfield, so let’s start with him.

I’ve heard that what sparked the idea of going with a color-blind cast for this was that it hit the director one day that Dev Patel would make a perfect David Copperfield, and I can see why. If one isn’t careful David can become a pretty bland character, so it’s important that he be played by someone who can really bring out his endearing-ness. And Dev did a great job of that. His David was charming and likeable and properly naïve, with a puppy-dog kind of energy that I thought was perfect for the character.

I didn’t like all of the writing of his character, and unfortunately I think he came across as too modern at times – which makes sense given the style of the script; some of the other characters fell into that at times too.

I also must give a shout-out to the child actor who played David at the beginning of the film (looking it up, it turns out there were two child actors for David? Hm. Well, that kind of seems like overkill when they just switch to Dev Patel so soon into the movie, but they both did a good job in any case). I am rarely pleased with child actors, but I thought child-David was great – he was sweet and polite and cute and his ✨vibes✨ were just how I pictured David in the book.

There’s a very interesting casting choice made in that Morfydd Clark plays both Dora and David’s mother – presumably to hint at similarities in their characters? I thought she was fine as Clara Copperfield, though she didn’t make much of an impression (but then again, she’s only in the movie very briefly). I thought her Dora was a little too ditzy – she was sort of teetering on the edge of caricature, a little too much so for my taste. I don’t know how much of that was due to her and how much the script/direction, though.

And I have to say, I’ll talk more about the script later, but the conversations between David and Dora tended to be really bad. Yes, I know they were supposed to be really dumb, but it was to the extent that I was cringing rather.

Peggotty and her family were fine, but they sadly got very little screen time. I didn’t really like Mr. Peggotty – he just felt very meh, not at all like the warm, loving, stable support he was in the book – and Ham also felt a little underwhelming. Come to think of it, I didn’t feel like you got enough sense of a personality from Aimée Kelly’s Emily either. Oh, and I know this is only a little thing, but I was very disappointed Mrs. Gummidge didn’t get her character progression!

…okay, forget what I just said about the Peggottys being fine.

I did like Daisy May Cooper as Peggotty herself. She wasn’t quite how I pictured Peggotty, but she got across properly affectionate, slightly prickly Peggotty-ish vibes, so that was all to the good.

I thought Darren Boyd was a great casting choice as Mr. Murdstone. I don’t think the writing made him quite menacing enough, but acting-wise he was great. I haven’t yet determined if I like Gwendoline Christie as Miss Murdstone or not…she doesn’t feel the same as the book character to me, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think she almost has more gravitas in this version; it feels like she’s the one who’s really in charge. And again, I don’t know how I feel about it. (She was properly menacing, at least, in a pleasingly semi-subtle way.)

I found Mr. Micawber to be a bit too conniving. They didn’t make him a villain or anything; he was still somewhat likeable, but came across as somewhat of a manipulator, not someone just naively drifting through life “hoping something would turn up.” It’s a perfectly legitimate portrayal of the character (and it would admittedly be hard to think he WASN’T deliberately trying to manipulate people at points in the book), but I prefer a slightly less worldly and more naïve Mr. Micawber, I suppose. SPOILERS I also don’t really see what purpose having the Micawbers go to debtor’s prison served, beyond I suppose making David feel even more alone? (And giving us one of the most strangely satisfying lines in the movie, “YOU’RE STEALING AN HONEST MAN’S CHICKEN!”) END SPOILERS

I could talk about Steerforth or Agnes now, but I’ve been waiting patiently to talk about my favorite characters and my favorite part of the story all this time and I shan’t wait any longer. My feelings will not be repressed. But before I talk about the characters I have to first briefly touch on their place of residence, because Betsey Trotwood’s house is one of my favorite houses in literature. If I could choose a fictional home for my own, it might very well be hers. (Especially if it came with inhabitants included.)

Here’s a peek at the inside

and a peek at the outside.

Her house didn’t look quite as bright and light as I thought it should, but it was close. It was all very colorful and quirky and cozy and Trotwood-y. I was pretty pleased with it.

I think Tilda Swinton was perfect casting as Aunt Betsey. I saw pictures from this adaptation before I started reading the book, and I couldn’t help but picture Aunt Betsey as looking like Tilda Swinton the whole time I was reading. Somehow she’s able to convey the exact right amount of zaniness while still maintaining the practical no-nonsense aspect of Aunt Betsey.

That being said, I don’t feel like her portrayal lived up to its full potential. She was still very good – probably among the best performances in the movie – but I don’t think we got enough sense of Aunt Betsey’s warm loving side. As it was in the book, she usually came across as prickly, but she had her soft side that we got rare glimpses of. Here, although we knew due to certain external reasons (like the fact of her taking in David and Mr. Dick) that she had a soft side, we practically never saw it. And I wanted to see it, doggone it.

Thinking about it abstractly, Hugh Laurie as Mr. Dick doesn’t seem like as obvious a casting choice as some of the others, but I think the result was absolutely perfect. Hugh excels at being very funny while simultaneously providing real nuance and character depth, and that worked so, so well for Mr. Dick. He was every bit as humorous as in the book, but his character was also handled with a sensitivity that made him feel very real and fleshed-out. There were some real emotional moments, though it was all very subtly done. Mr. Dick was so endearing in the book and was every bit as endearing here, and I cannot stress enough how much I loved him.

(I also think the writing of Mr. Dick’s character was especially good, better than most of the others. In fact, we spent a lot more comparative time on Mr. Dick than other technically more important characters…(aHeM EmilyandHamandMr.Peggotty) but considering the fact that I would happily watch a whole movie of David just spending time with him and Aunt Betsey, I’m honestly not complaining too much.)

Okay, okay. Now I’ll move onto the Wickfields.

I was sorely disappointed about Agnes. You see, I really really liked her when she first appeared. She was more outgoing than book-Agnes, but I thought she had the right feeling of kind, elegant gravitas, and the right Agnes-y ability to immediately put people at ease. And though Rosalind Eleazar’s acting continued to be good throughout, I didn’t at all like how her character was written. I don’t think they understood her. The two things that greatly impressed me about book-Agnes were 1) her ability to influence people and direct them towards the right solely through her own example of moral goodness, and 2) her complete kindness and fairness toward everybody. She certainly wouldn’t be laughing with David over Uriah Heep’s oddities behind his back, or just think of it as an amusing escapade when David got drunk and made a fool of himself with his school buddies.

Mr. Wickfield was even worse, though. He was turned into pure comic relief, which was quite a shame. I was so impressed with how well they handled Mr. Dick; why couldn’t they have handled Mr. Wickfield with a similar degree of nuance?

Anuerin Barnard was quite good as Steerforth, though, and I think they did a good job of capturing the complexities of his character. In fact, if anything they may have presented him a bit too sympathetically. They combined Mrs. Steerforth and Rosa Dartle into one character, which was an interesting choice – I’m not sure of my thoughts on that – but I think that taking that change into consideration, she was quite good.

Ben Wishaw made a good Uriah Heep, as well. I haven’t seen the Paddington movies (though I read a lot of the stories as a kid), so he is not already entrenched in my mind as Paddington…which was probably for the best. Paddington and Uriah Heep are not one and the same, and that you may tie to, as Susan Baker would say.

In any case, Ben Wishaw was a marvelous mix of calculating, obsequious, and just plain weird, all just as Uriah Heep should be. (This story is full of characters who are weird, and the movie absolutely revels in it.) However, his vibe almost felt a little too polished and clean-cut to me, with his perfect little bowl cut and everything. I guess that makes him feel a bit more subtle, which I would tend to consider a plus, but it’s also a bit of a departure from the book. But changing the source material to make it somewhat more subtle isn’t something I’m going to complain about too much.

…I think I’ve finally come to the end of major characters, haven’t I? (I can’t tell you how they portrayed Traddles, because alas, there was no Traddles. ‘Twas most sad.)

Not much of the main plot was changed, beyond condensing things/leaving things out for time reasons. SPOILERS It’s much clearer when Aunt Betsey loses her fortune that it’s due to Uriah Heep’s machinations, which I actually preferred – throughout most of the book you feel that he’s supposed to be this menace to David, but for most of the time it doesn’t feel like he ever actually does anything. Also, they dispensed with the weird “oh, but she never actually did lose the fortune after all!” thing, which was also a good change, in my opinion. END SPOILERS

I thought that David’s arc wasn’t handled quite as well as it could have been. They did a good job of showing how Steerforth was a bad influence and how David was becoming more and more selfish at that point (which I was glad to see, because I think that’s an important part of the story) but they didn’t do as great a job of making clear that he eventually grew out of that.  

Sadly, the whole Emily plotline was given very little time, so it packed much less of an emotional punch than in the book. Especially since that plotline took a lot of time – even when the story was focusing on other things – in the book, so it felt like it was overshadowing a lot of the story even when nothing was moving forward with it. In the movie it happened very suddenly, then was almost immediately resolved.

Not to give too much away, but a couple untimely demises that occurred in the book did not occur here, which was interesting. I think the reason that they did that was because this adaptation is really trying to play up the comic aspect, which often is unfortunately at the expense of the more emotional moments.

I understand that the movie isn’t trying to be a grounded realistic adaptation of the story. It very much gives us the feeling throughout that we’re viewing the world through David’s imagination, with all the bright vibrant colors (including everyone’s wardrobes, which I loved), the vivid larger-than-life characters, the artsy filming techniques which were employed, &c. And I think that could have worked very well. I quite understand wanting to do something new with the material, and not just tell the story again the same way it’s been told numerous times before.

But all that being said, I do really think it takes something away from the story to play up the comedy at the expense of the tragedy. The horrible parts of David’s life were just as important and vivid parts of his lived experience as the funny moments, and to brush over them almost seemed like belittling them. The movie as a whole felt like it lacked some of the earnestness and sincerity the book had because of that.

Also, I’m sorry to say this, but…the scriptwriters are simply not as good at comedy as Dickens was. Some of the jokes landed really well, but on the whole the humor was quite a mixed bag for me.

Viewing the movie as a whole, I don’t think that the cutting and pacing were handled that well – I mentioned before how little time is given to Emily’s storyline, and in general some parts felt rushed and others overly drawn out. It didn’t feel like a smooth cohesive story. After finishing the book of David Copperfield, I felt like I had a lot of really good messages and themes and such to chew on. It didn’t feel like the movie had cohesive themes in the same way that the book did. I was conscious of having been on a very pleasant and very colorful ride, but it felt like a lot of the real meat of what the story was all about just wasn’t there.  

I do want to stress that I found the movie enjoyable, and I would certainly like to re-watch it. It has a lot of good points, but one can’t help but feel that it could have been so much better, and that’s always frustrating. I so wish they could have taken this cast and done something more with them, because a lot of the characters – David, Agnes, Aunt Betsey, Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep – were really well-cast, and seeing them in a well-written and well-directed adaptation would have been absolutely wonderful. (Or a mini-series. If they had done a ten-hour mini-series with a lot of the same actors but that told the story at a more leisurely pace, really captured the heart of the book (AND INCLUDED TRADDLES), but still in a vibrant, imaginative style, it would have been pretty much complete perfection and probably one of my favorite things to watch.)

So…yes! I guess that sums up my thoughts. Far from perfect – mostly due to bad pacing and bad scripting – but definitely enjoyable, with a really good cast, and lovely to look at. (Also, I forgot to mention this earlier, but it has a fantabulous soundtrack. It’s actually one of my favorite soundtracks to listen to.)

Have you seen The Personal History of David Copperfield? Have you read the book? What are some of your favorite Dickens adaptations?