The unexpected optimism of Armando Iannucci
Or, a dark wit decides to smile
The narrative arc of 2020 was long, and in the end it’s bending toward cabin fever. So focus instead on how things are unexpectedly looking up in the work of Armando Iannucci.
Iannucci is, of course, the best. He made his name scripting the thoroughly cynical and deeply profane politicians on the BBC series The Thick Of It,
“Scruples? Scruples? What are they? Is that those low-fat Kettle Chips?”
then ported them over to the big screen with In The Loop,
“You say nothing, okay? You stay detached. Otherwise that’s what I'll do to your retinas.”
then Americanized them and sanded down the nihilism ever so slightly in Veep.
“Right now you’re about as toxic as a urinal cake in Chernobyl.”
Complete mastery of whip-cruel political banter made him the Anti-Sorkin, but then he really stepped things up a notch by recognizing that Steve Buscemi was born to play Nikita Khrushchev. The Death of Stalin, his 2017 film adaptation of a graphic novel, was a dark masterpiece, in part because of ingenious casting and in part because Iannucci’s tone exactly matched the tenor of the era.
“Our general secretary is lying in a puddle of indignity.”
“Yeah, he’s feeling unwell, clearly.”
After a comedy so black the punchlines left bruises, Iannucci seemed ready for something new. At the beginning of 2020, that looked like Avenue 5, his HBO space satire featuring Hugh Laurie at his Hugh Lauriest. And toward the end of 2020, there is The Personal History of David Copperfield, a ersatz Dickens adaptation featuring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, and Hugh Laurie at his Hugh Lauriest.
The premise of Avenue 5 is not promising; has there ever been a good space satire? Even if you take Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs as the exception that proves the rule, they generally feel like a riff on a riff — what if we went to space, but what if we then made fun of that concept? It’s an astronaut helmet on an astronaut helmet. Sorry, Zapp Brannigan.
A stellar (space jokes! the worst!) cast does their best with Avenue 5, and the dialogue is quite good. It just doesn’t land in zero-gravity.
“No weather in space, right? Makes it hard to talk about the weather, which I’m kind of illustrating.”
“I am trained to make sure your body wash gets replenished, not to rectify the catastrophe of human existence.”
“The best analogy I can think of is he’s like an idiot in charge of a spaceship. But that is not an analogy—that is just a fact.”
In David Copperfield, Iannucci does a hard reset and returns to the classics. There are no swearing politicians here and the ineptitude is located right where Dickens left it, in the evil clutches of Uriah Heep (“It thrills me to the stomach”) and the drunken grasp of Mr. Wickfield (“All this talk of thirst is making me thirsty.”)
Iannucci brings a Terry Gilliam flair to the visuals, changing scenes with the drop of a sheet and segueing in and out of David’s imagination. The film features Tilda Swinton at her imperious best (“I am not someone in my circumstances”), Hugh Laurie playing insanity effortlessly (“My mind is as clear as a soap bubble!”), and Dev Patel as David Copperfield jotting down all the best lines as he prepares to become the hero of his own story.
Peggotty? Peggotty? Peggotty? You mean to say a human being went into a church and had herself named Peggotty? Did your mother sneeze when you were christened?
The pessimism at the core of Iannucci’s work is gone, replaced by something sunshiney and clever and somewhat resembling optimism. It’s a tonic from a cynic, and as such it hits the spot.
Get Twit Quick
The quest to find that one perfect tweet continues, and this week our guide is @ronnui_.
Q. What’s the one word that makes any tweet better?
A. Furthermore. Whatever you got going on when you see that you know shit’s about to go down.
Q. Edit button y/n?
A. Absolutely no to the edit button!! Twitter plays an important role as an archive of important moments, opinions, and announcements. An edit button could trivialize the entire history of that. If you realize you made a typo, just repost your tweet!
Q. All-time fave book or movie?
A. One of my fav books is Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. I think it was released in the 90s but it's a very human look at what were at the time endangered species, admitting that due to climate change and habitat encroachment that there are animals we live with today that our children may never see. There's a lot of humor in it but I like it because of the idea that extinctions like the dodo are happening all the time and we can do something about it.
Q. Joke, epigram, or witticism you live by?
A. A tweet I live by is "I have never in my life learned from another person's mistakes, I would literally let a giant wooden horse into my house right this second" by twitter genius @iamspacegirl. Ok so it’s not advice but I relate very strongly to it and think about it all the time.
Q. Best thing to put on toast?
A. My favorite thing to put on toast oddly is cottage cheese and olive oil. People need to break free of their cottage cheese preconceptions and embrace the savory cottage cheese lifestyle.
Therein lies Issue No. 77 of Get Wit Quick. To be fair, Iannucci made David Copperfield before Avenue 5, so my narrative arc is somewhat thwarked. Also, Michael Palin was in The Death of Stalin and it’s a good rule of thumb to see anything featuring Michael Palin. I very nearly wrote “In space, no one can hear you quip,” and stumbled into the event horizon of sci-fi dullness. Unlike Dickens, I wasn’t paid by the word for Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Add heart to wit via the ♥️ below.