Of course the major
fuss about Darkest Hour is Gary Oldman's performance as
Winston Churchill, which is the hot favourite for an Oscar in a
couple of days. Darkest Hour is the latest in a series of
films about the early days of the Second World War; given Britain's
impending exit from the European Union, this retrospection (while the
100th anniversary of the Great War was in progress) is
telling. And you could easily look back to 2002's The Gathering
Storm as a precursor to this cycle, and to Albert Finney's
performance as the benchmark for future Churchills. Because Gathering
Storm was made by HBO and BBC for television, Finney wasn't
eligible for an Oscar (he did win a TV Bafta and an Emmy).
Oldman's Churchill
contrasts with Brian Cox's in another Oscar-eligible film,
Churchill. Where Cox lets his own rough edges give Churchill more
bite (and makes his self-doubt, which is the movie's theme, that much
more telling), the reason Oldman's performance is the odds-on Oscar
winner is that it plays so much against his persona as an actor. It
is not that his Churchill is a remarkable interpretation, but that it
is a bravura force of acting to convince us that an
actor who played Sid Vicious or Lee Harvey Oswald can convince
against physical type.
And this Oldman
does, which is why an Oscar would be deserved. Whether his Churchill
is, well, Churchillian, is another matter. Not least the drift into a
northern accent (listen to his final words in the film—like the
narration of a Hovis advert). He works by accentuating some gestures,
particularly of jaw, and by overall bearing, but he also is sometimes
seeking to present a kinder, gentler Churchill. This of course is partly down to
scripting, and the way the film-makers want to present a
softer-centered Winston—this is the charming but self-obsessed
Churchill with a touch of the Boris Johnson's about him, especially
in his scenes with Kirsten Scott Thomas, although, since she is his wife, perhaps not so Boris. The film sticks to what have
become generally accepted tropes of Churchill at war: the young
secretary who 'tames' the curmudgeon (Lily James, looking beatific as
Churchill recites his speeches accurately) and the requisite King's
Speech meetings with King George, which end in friendship and
respect. Ben Mendelsohn as George VI is one of a number of actors helped
by their casting for their physical resemblance to their characters, and
Mendelsohn does not fall back on the speech impediment as he conveys his
own resolve to battle on (by staying in London, not evacuating). By
contrast, Samuel West is instantly recognisable as Anthony Eden, not
because he looks like Eden but because he has a superficial
attractiveness and charm and, of course, a moustache.
Churchill's winning over the King (as opposed to George's great friendship with Halifax) is interesting
in another sense, because the film creates a fictional trip for
Churchill on the underground, one stop to Westminster, which the filmmakers turn into the
longest one stop imaginable. The reason is to let the common people,
including a West Indian man and a child, express their admiration,
and convince Churchill not to sue for peace with Germany. We know he
did not need that sort of convincing, and we know he never, ever, got into the underground, not ever, but it is as if Joe Wright has to convince a
contemporary audience that Churchill was a real man of the people as much as a
man of the King (it is just those Tory toffs who can't abide his
pushiness, which the film implies he gets from his American mother,
bless them).
But the film, like
Brexit, is less about Europe than about the Tory party and their
resistance to Churchill's leadership. The key figure here is Lord
Halifax (Stephen Dillane) another case of remarkable physical resemblance and played very well as a cross between Jacob
Rees-Mogg and John Redwood. There has been some criticism of the film
for taking small liberties with the whole question of Chamberlain's
successor, but in general it gets the basic tenor correct and cannot
be faulted for sometimes dramatising it with face to face scenes that
didn't actually happen. If anything, it slights the support for
Churchill within the Tory party (see, for example, Lynne Olson's
Troublesome Young Men, which
sometimes gets a bit too American touristy, but tells the tale of the
young Tory rebels who backed Churchill—and note too Halifax's own
memoirs, which were notoriously less than forthright).
The
key scenes involve Chamberlain poised to cue the Tory benches to
support Churchill's speeches, or not. In the first instance, their
silence is deafening, and immediately brings to mind the current
Brexit situation, and the fact that it is another case of the
Conservative party putting its own squabbles well ahead of the good
of the country. Ronald Pickup makes the most of a dying Chamberlain,
and in reality these are the film's best scenes, within Parliament, shot to reflect an almost timeless history as well as a
smoke-filled room in which deals must be done. A darkest debate, if
not hour, and brilliantly shot by Bruno Delbonnel.
It's
certainly a more satisfying film than Churchill,
and Cox's performance in that film, while perhaps getting Churchill
with more overall accuracy, suffers from the strange characterisation
he's forced to enact, in which Montgomery's weaknesses are transferred to him. Oldman's ability as an actor is something that
has gone overlooked by many for many years, because he's lacked the flashy
roles, though not the convincing character
parts (often as villains) such as in The Contender
or Leon. But his
Churchill is very much of a piece with his Beethoven or his George
Smiley, both parts where he gets an essence of characters he would
not commonly be thought his to play. That alone makes Darkest
Hour worth viewing.
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