Dickens adaptations could do with more of Iannucci’s joie de vivre

As the old saying doesn’t quite go, you wait all year for an adaptation of Charles Dickens, and then three come along at once. Last year, the BBC produced the grimmest and darkest version of A Christmas Carol imaginable, “freely adapted’, as the saying goes, by Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders. Radio 4 currently has a similarly bold reimagining of Oliver Twist being broadcast, Oliver: Lagos to London, which transposes the narrative from Victorian London to modern-day Nigeria, and Armando Iannucci has returned with his new adaptation of David Copperfield, starring Dev Patel as Copperfield.

Iannucci’s film, which has won awards and is doing very well at the box office, is the most traditional of the three, but is by no means staid or boring. After a couple of decades in which Dickens adaptations tended to be extremely well-crafted but faintly dull and prosaically literal accounts, usually made for the BBC and often featuring Edward Fox, writers and directors have belatedly (150 years after Dickens’ death) woken up to the realisation that his books can be adapted in a more exciting and adventurous fashion.

One way in which this manifested itself in David Copperfield is with its diverse casting, led, of course, by Patel. Its producer Kevin Loader suggested that “In all our conversations, we never spoke about another actor to play our lead than Dev. We often have lists for parts, but we never had a list for David Copperfield”, implying that, had Patel turned the role down, the film would not have been made, which would have been an enormous pity.

Iannucci himself noted that the reasons for the diversity of the casting were twofold. Firstly, as is now the custom, to broaden the range of actors used, but also to be true to the original novel. As he said in a recent interview, “It speaks of contemporary issues. I wanted to get that life and that humour and approach it as if there were no rules as to how you make a costume drama. I wanted it to feel that the audience feel that the people they’re watching are in their present day, this is their modern world.” When Patel asked Iannucci whether he was making a social or political point – making the Copperfields Indian or Pakistani immigrants, for instance – Iannucci answered that the casting would be entirely colour-blind, saying “Although it’s set in 1840, for the people in the film it’s the present day. And it’s an exciting present.”

Although a few people have predictably grumbled about the casting, Iannucci has made what is certainly his most ambitious and interesting film, moving away from the rat-a-tat-tat satirical profanity of In the Loop and the horror comedy of The Death of Stalin in favour of something more poetic. He is helped by his perfect cast, who serve up big laughs and pathos with consummate skill; Hugh Laurie, especially, brings an almost unnerving sincerity and poignancy to the character of Mr Dick, usually portrayed as simply a comic grotesque who has become obsessed with the execution of Charles I.

But then, it would be hard to fail with actors of the calibre of Tilda Swinton (as Betsey Trotwood), Ben Whishaw (Uriah Heep), Rosalind Eleazar (Agnes) and Iannucci regular Peter Capaldi, as an unusually manic and antic Mr Micawber. It’s just a pity that there was no room for his famous saying on the virtues of thrift and the dangers of extravagance, though one imagines that, in Capaldi and Iannucci’s world, it might have been delivered as “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds, nought and six, result – you’re fucked.”

Iannucci’s film is a thoroughly enjoyable and often hilarious couple of hours in the cinema, with his exemplary actors bringing the story to life. It differs greatly to Knight’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which often seemed grim and downbeat for the sake of it. In his interpretation, an oddly-accented Guy Pearce made heavy weather of the part of Ebenezer Scrooge, and was saddled with an awkwardly integrated subplot concerning his sexual blackmail of Bob Cratchit’s wife. I suspect that literally nobody, other than Knight, has ever read the novel and thought “What this really could do with is a scene in which Scrooge forces Mrs Cratchit to strip before humiliating her”. However, it now exists, and must be considered alongside more conventional versions of the novel starring the likes of Alastair Sim, George C Scott and Patrick Stewart, as well as the surprisingly excellent and faithful Muppet’s Christmas Carol.

Yet what Dickensian adaptations could do with is more joie de vivre and colour. Long before Gravity and Roma won him Best Director Oscars, Alfonso Cuaron made a joyful, vibrant film of Great Expectations, relocating the narrative from mid-nineteenth century London to late twentieth century Florida, and transforming Pip from an orphan-turned-gentleman into an aspirant artist named Finn, bankrolled by a mysterious benefactor. The chemistry between Ethan Hawke and a pre-GOOP Gwyneth Paltrow is electric, a supporting cast including Robert de Niro, Anne Bancroft and a brilliant Chris Cooper as an updated Joe Gargery are all superb, and the lush cinematography by Cuaron’s regular director of photograph Emmanuel Lubezki is just as good as the films that he won Oscars for. It remains underrated, but is well worth seeing.

So this is what we need. The vibrancy and intelligence of David Copperfield, the colour and sexiness of Great Expectations, the social conscience of Oliver: Lagos to London – and, if you must, the swearing and irreverence of A Christmas Carol. The next adaptation that combines all of these facets should be all-conquering and truly unmissable. And, come to think of it, it’s been a long time since there was an adaptation of The Pickwick Papers…