Darkest Hour
Directed by Joe Wright
Written by Anthony McCarten
Produced by Tim Bevan, Lisa Bruce, Eric Fellner, Anthony McCarten, Douglas Urbanski
Starring Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup, Ben Mendelsohn
Cinematography Bruno Delbonnel
As a child, I was taught, over and over, that Winston S. Churchill was the greatest man who ever lived. It was an opinion held nearly universally in both England and Canada, with the firm opinion that he single-handedly defeated Hitler. It was nonsense, of course. His career was mostly that of military and economic catastrophes, including Gallipoli (several hundred thousand dead for no military benefit) and the gold standard, which plunged Britain into a deep depression and helped spark the Great Depression a year later. Someone once said of Churchill that he had a thousand ideas a day, of which four were good.
There was even a TV show, The Valiant Years, which I watched religiously, that featured Richard Burton voicing Churchill’s quotes. Like just about everything written about the man in the post-war years, the series was an unabashed hagiography. So we didn’t hear about the drinking and the often abrasive relationship he had with the Parliament and the military, or his missteps in the African campaign.
But the Darkest Hour really did happen, in May of 1940, when France and Belgium fell to the Nazi war machine, 350,000 men in the British Expeditionary Force were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, and in the face of overweening odds, there was strong sentiment in Parliament to negotiate some sort of partial surrender in which Britain could maintain at least a facade of independence. It was Churchill’s moment to shine, and he did so, with a light that saved Britain and represented the first turning of the tide against Hitler.
Darkest Hour (2017) is an exceptionally good movie. The direction and acting are stunning, and Gary Oldman is amazing as Churchill. It’s not a mindless hagiography, which is refreshing in and of itself. Churchill did become Prime Minister in that critical moment over the deep reservations of his party, the rest of Parliament, and even King George VI. Far from being seen as a hero of any sort, he was widely viewed as a posturing and overbearing buffoon whose totally unmerited self-confidence had led from one disaster to the next. And that never entirely went away; immediately after the war, the British electorate threw him out of office, and when the let him back in for three peacetime years as PM, it was pretty much a disaster, with Churchill best remembered then for fighting National Health.
But the movie’s attitude toward Churchill could be aptly summed up by one quote from Clemmie, his wife: “Winston, your insecurities are what make you strong.” It’s when he sees that his first, second and third reactions are all horrible ideas that he becomes a great leader.
If the movie has a flaw, it’s that it tries to construct an entire new hagiography of Churchill. For instance, in his moment of deepest despair, it shows the King showing up in Churchill’s sleeping quarters at Number 10 to offer his support. Never happened. Kings summon; they don’t pop in for midnight visits. Yes, the King did come around on Churchill, but it was only when it was clear that it was Churchill or Hitler.
Churchill is shown taking a dramatic ride on the Underground to Westminster before his fateful meeting with the Outer Council. Again, never happened. It made for a wonderful scene, but again, pure fantasy. (Churchill, however, did have a habit of wandering out and about during the Blitz, and standing on the roof of his headquarters, and he did seek out the views of typical Londoners, so there’s that.)
Clemmie and the King are shown listening to the radio as Churchill gives his famous “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech. Again, never happened. Parliament didn’t broadcast its proceedings in any form until some thirty years later. But Churchill, sensing that he was about to give a humdinger of a speech, recorded himself giving it, and released it to the BBC a fortnight later.
So in what was arguably England’s most dramatic moment, and with its most outsized personality, Joe Wright chose to gild the lily. It would have been a great movie without that, and it’s a damned fine movie with it.
Flaws notwithstanding, it’s well worth watching.
Now on Netflix.