Movie Review: The Personal History of David Copperfield

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A+

Spending six months with not being able to go to a movie (except for drive-in movies), I feel blessed that I can resume my movie going experience with this absolutely brilliant film. 

One factor that makes this a perfect film to resume my movie going is that it is visually beautiful and perfectly suited to a big screen. The places David visits just as vivid and breathtaking here as they do in our minds when we read Charles Dickens' great novel. Adding to this is the great cinematic techniques being used to tell the story. One of the best is how memories or stories we are being told appear projected on a screen behind the characters. Writing about this may make it sound like a distracting gimmick. However it comes off as the perfect way to tell the story. It reminds us in a way that we are watching a movie, but without the characters actually breaking the fourth wall. Cinema has a feeling of magic and whimsy to it (theatres having been closed for months only heightens this) and to show these scenes as movies within a movie only heightens the magic and whimsy of this story.  

Charles Dickens is one of my favorite fictional authors and this movie does incredible justice to one of his finest works. Naturally the whole book can't be shown in this film, but yet the movie never feels like an abridged version of the book or like anything is missing. It feels instead like a full and complete story. One of Charles Dickens' greatest strengths was his whimsical sense of humor and how well he could mesh that humor with his social commentary. This movie captures that very well. It has a great offbeat sense of humor, yet it never distracts from the drama and social commentary. In other words this movie is just as entertaining as it is brilliant. All of this is helped by an incredible cast that play their parts to perfection.

Oh my gosh! This film was such an incredible reintroduction to the movies and I feel in love with movies all over again watching it. If you have not seen a movie in an indoor theatre over the past 6 months, do yourself a favor and see this first and fall in love with the movies all over again. 

-Michael J. Ruhland