What the Dickens? David Copperfield reimagined

While it’s fair to wonder whether the world required another adaptation of a Charlies Dickens novel, credit the genius-level comedic mind of Armando Iannucci (“The Death of Stalin”) for properly reimagining a classic. The brilliance of “The Personal History of David Copperfield” begins with the casting the lead role — Dev Patel commands attention with his keen eyes, scampering manner and wonderful head of hair. Jairaj Varsani is also fabulous playing young David, the boy who asks, “What’s to become of me?”

Part of Iannucci’s commendable anti-stodginess is casting a diverse group of actors that moves past what these old characters are “supposed to look like” in the Masterpiece Theatre sense. Young David suffers under a brutal stepfather Murdstone (Darren Boyd) until being happily packed off to the seaside town Yarmouth with a cheerful lot of fish gutters including Peggotty (Daisy May Cooper), Ham (Anthony Welsh) and Emily (Aimee Kelly), who create a paradoxical paradise in an overturned boat on the beach.

David fights through an unpleasant spell toiling in the bottle works and comes out at the country residence of Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton) and Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie). It’s there that the film’s stunning set design and costuming comes into full flower through capacious wide-angle shots full of riotous action. Swinton gives a typically marvelous performance and we savor line readings like, “Bless me you are very young.”

One of literature’s all-time best bad-penny characters, Mr. Micawber (Peter Capaldi), spends the film running into David while running away from his creditors — he “exists primarily al fresco” on streets where “every meal’s a picnic.” Most uproariously, Micawber plays himself off as a professor and attempts to bluff his way through a Latin grammar lesson with only his guile and a croaking concertina.

Throughout, David narrates his own tale to great effect. He bounces between his disparately charming love interests Dora Spenlow (Morfydd Clark, as daft here as she was dark in “Saint Maud”) and Agnes Wickfield (Rosalind Eleazar). As the film dizzyingly progresses, more characters are piled into smaller and smaller spaces to greater and greater effect — one even insists that she be written out of a scene. Such a jam-packed two hours that not every character can be discussed in this space — can you believe Ben Whishaw’s Uriah Heep hasn’t been mentioned yet?

Above all, we respect David as a lover, a savorer, of words. He keeps scribbled lines on scraps of paper everywhere, often literally clutching them close to his chest. In a touching scene, a tiny apartment crammed with humanity is further subdivided so that David might have a place to write. While not a straightforward adaptation, Iannucci’s film has every reason to exist because he achieves exactly what David strives to accomplish in telling his tale — creating something more than mere fiction.