A Muppet Christmas Carol, there are plenty of dull miniseries and misjudged movies like 2005's Oliver Twist, a theoretically heartwarming family story directed by Roman Polanski, strangely.
But 2020's recent release The Personal History of David Copperfield has been a success with critics and audiences alike. Many reviewers have found the condensed adaptation of Dickens' semi-autobiographical 1850 doorstopper to be a charming, poignant, and surprisingly funny testament to the author's enduring popularity. But what changes did the film make that diverge from the original novel, and why">Goldfinch's negative reviews prove, it's often difficult to turn a long coming-of-age novel into an effective film, yet Armando Iannucci's adaptation seems to have done the trick. But at what cost?
The biggest changes in the film adaptation are a significant softening of Steerforth's character from an outright villain to a tragic antihero, an understandable simplifying of the novel's romantic subplot, and a change in the depiction of both Mr. Wickfield's alcoholism and Uriah Heep's scheming. Although some of the changes are cleverly used to tighten the plot and increase narrative momentum, some are detrimental to the novel's ideas and leave the film's own story feeling muddled and incomplete.
A Softer Steerforth
While there is some bitter feeling that Marie Curie movie, Radioactive, that didn't get everything right on his CV. But whilst the actor is a charming presence, this change renders Steerforth less of a villain and more of an antihero, replacing the book's evidence that wealth rots the soul with a "pity the poor rich kid" plot.
David Copperfield's Simplified Love Triangle
One of the film's more understandable decisions is cutting down and simplifying the love triangle between the title character, his first love Dora, and Agnes Wickfield. In the novel, David marries and attempts to start a family with the naive, immature Dora, only for her to fall ill and eventually die after a tragic miscarriage. It's a heavy, poignant plot that ends with David married to his second love interest, Agnes. As such, it's understandable (and pretty funny) when Dora asks the film's version of David to write her out, as she feels superfluous to this truncated version of the story. Even in its shortened form, The Personal History of David Copperfield needs a character guide to keep track of its sizeable cast. As such, whilst the film is far from perfect, choosing to cut this entire romance subplot instead of attempting to cram it into the movie's limited runtime is one of the adaptation's better calls. It creates a more streamlined story as well as sparing Dora from a tragic fate, thus lightening the tone of the film as a whole in the process. Now back to the mistakes!
Wickfield's (Not-So) Comical Drinking and Uriah's Scheming
Steerforth's softened depiction will come as a surprise to many fans of the novel, but the portrayal of Uriah Heep and Wickfield is similarly unexpected and pretty questionable, given how much they alter the book's story. Avenue 5 - Armando Iannucci's other more recent project - has some sharp social satire going on beneath its comedic exterior. And his adaptation of David Copperfield is no different, although some viewers may be disappointed to see what the changes in Iannucci's film imply about the original novel. In the book, Wickfield's alcoholism is portrayed realistically as a tragic illness that arises from the deep, inconsolable grief of losing his wife years earlier. It's this alcoholism that allows the opportunistic creep Uriah Heep to forge Wickfield's signature and steal his fortune. But the film depicts Wickfield's alcoholism as a running gag, playing the illness for laughs.
That transformation is a betrayal of the source. The book's Uriah constantly claims he's humble, a trait he picked up from a system that rewarded him for never aspiring for anything "above his station". In the novel, this makes Heep an incurably bitter man who David never feels comfortable with. In the film, however, David is initially friends with Uriah, and the character's constant claims of humility are never explained. Dickens' original novel implies that a system that forces the working class to act humble and servile will result in bitter, angry people who'll do anything to get ahead in life, an idea that remains relevant to modern viewers. Film fans wondering why Parasite won the 2020 Best Picture Oscar could look at the film's story of the working class attacking the uber-rich to survive as a timely political parable. In contrast, The Personal History of David Copperfield blames David for not being friendly enough to Uriah, which gives the system a free and puts an unfair onus on the eponymous hero, who frankly has enough to deal with without having to fix England's unfair class system through the power of friendship while he's at it.
