Making the Familiar New

Image: Fox / Searchlight.

Over the Christmas holiday period, different members of the team are contributing personal blog posts. Today, Selvedge’s Brand Collaborations Consultant, Pamela Kelly recommends a new favourite film. The other night, I sat down on the couch in search of entertainment. I have never been a huge fan of time spent in front of the television but prefer instead to head out into the natural world in search of adventure. There I can lose myself in the sights, sounds and smells around me, and find relief from the day’s stress. During “lockdown” this ritual did not change. I walked almost every day, rain or shine, and often trod the same route. This past year, monotony was the metronome of our lives. Not wanting to give in to it, I vowed to find the new in the familiar.

Image: Fox / Searchlight.

Back to the search for entertainment and the commitment to seeing the familiar afresh, I spied an intriguing title: The Personal Life of David Copperfield. And what a wonderful find it was. And speaking of fresh, never have the ticks and peculiarities of Dickens’ over-the-top characters manifested as brilliantly in a film as they have in Iannucci’s. There is a touch of the surreal to the whole film that makes David’s slog through Victorian England’s depravity seem comedic instead of just tragic.

The movie’s adherence to the period is true: the costumes are perfectly crafted to enhance each character’s most illustrious qualities, the grime and squalor of factory conditions are rendered in perfect meanness, and the elegant homes of the upper classes are tightly turned out. The color-blind cast moves seamlessly through Dickens’ twisted world all the while affirming both the message of Copperfield and of our time: it does not matter where you come from, or what you wear, but who you are. If, in the months ahead, you to need to see something fresh I recommend watching: The Personal Life of David Copperfield.