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Dev Patel as David Copperfield: His Character Trait?
Be Fidel!
Photo: Entertainment One
Was Charles Dickens the first pop writer?
The latest adaptation of his 170-year-old novel "David Copperfield" looks like this.
Since Baz Luhrman's wacky version of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" from 1996, no other director has revamped classic literature as gorgeously as filmmaker Armando Iannucci.
In "David Copperfield - Once Wealth and Back" Iannucci presents a story based on the Dickens book that takes place in the 19th century.
But it has the magic of a colorful lucky drug trip, which can actually only be owed to an alchemist of our time.
Shaped by Dickens' own biography
"Always in a good mood, the boy" is the motto of the radiant, daring title hero, played by Jairaj Varsani as a child and who at the beginning trudges through a country idyll not far from a dream beach.
In fact, an almost compulsive good mood is also the leitmotif of this film.
The boy Copperfield is sent to the hell of a London bottle factory as a half-orphan and by an evil stepfather as a work slave.
But even after years of drudgery, the hero, who is portrayed as an adult by Dev Patel, keeps his cheerful view of the situation.
With a lanky gait and barely tamed, curly mane, he wanders through a world that resembles a madhouse.
The good and bad people this Copperfield encounters often seem perplexed and upset, as if they were absolutely defenseless against his awkward charm.
Copperfield's magic affects men and women alike and unfolds its full effect when his talent for writing helps him rise in society across all class differences.
The author Dickens has claimed that the coming-of-age story (philologists may also call it Bildungsroman) "David Copperfield" is his favorite of his works - it is definitely his most autobiographical book.
The director Armando Iannucci started out as a comedian.
The 56-year-old Brit was particularly successful with political satirical works such as the series "Veep - Die Vizepäsidentin" (2012 to 2019) and the movie "The Death of Stalin" (2017).
The highlight of his "David Copperfield" adaptation is the cast.
Patel, the son of Indian immigrants, embodies the son of a very pale skinned mother (Morfydd Clark) and the nephew of a great woman named Betsey Trotwood, played by Tilda Swinton.
Benedict Wong, whose parents immigrated to Great Britain from Hong Kong, struts through the picture as Mr. Wickfield and father of Copperfield's girlfriend Agnes, who in turn is played by Rosalind Eleazar, a Person of Color.
As a matter of course, Iannucci stages an arch-British literary material from the 19th century as a festival of contemporary diversity.
In this film you can talk about the Dr.
House famous actor Hugh Laurie laughs, who humps a funny joke through Aunt Trotwood's house in the role of Mr. Dick.
One can find amusement at Ben Wishaw, known to many as James Bond's helper Q;
here he grimaces in the role of the villain Uriah Heep.
Above all, however, you have to admire Tilda Swinton for how she turns Copperfield's real savior, the splayed Betsey Trotwood, into the drama of a vulnerable, rugged outsider instead of the obvious eccentric number.
Sometimes Iannucci's frenzied circus reminds of the madness of famous Monty Python films, made up of cabinet plays and funny cinema tricks in which the pictures suddenly crumple up as if the cinema screen were made of paper.
Sometimes it seems to the director that the story of the hero, who is transported out of the gutter into the light and then back into the gutter, slips out of the sideshow hype.
Even Copperfield's somewhat tragic and late-fulfilled love for the brave Agnes Wickfield is just a gaudy episode here.
A strange saint
The spectacle is held together by Dev Patel's gentle, haunting acting.
Patel, best known for films like "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) and "Hotel Mumbai" (2018), is a weird saint here, blessed with calm, wit and aplomb amid the general frenzy.
"I will not allow the darkness to return," says Patels Copperfield towards the end of a film in which, from the first to the last picture, he outshines not only all the characters around him, but also the unhappiness of the human race itself.
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