DARKEST HOUR: OSCAR WATCH I

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 100^th 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.

STILL SILENT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS: SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY

What is most significant about this 25^th anniversary edition of
The Silence Of The Lambs, apart from the fact it is the 25th anniversary of Harris' finishing the book, which was first published in 1989, is that its cover is taken from the poster of the movie, which appeared in 1991. This is appropriate because it was Jonathan Demme's film which propelled Thomas Harris' novel into the consciousness of the mainstream, and along the way turned Hannibal Lecter into a franchise.

This is not to demean Harris' accomplishment as a novelist. Re-reading Silence shows immediately how influential the book (and the film) have been—serial killer tropes merely touched on here have spawned a thousand copycat imitators. Even better, the novel itself does more than hold up, on re-reading it is just as taut and involving now as it was then, even given one's familiarity with the story.

The greatest insight a re-read provides is the recognition that the story is not about Lecter, nor about Jame Gumb, nor about Gumb's victims. In fact, Gumb's story is a parallel shadowing of the book's main concern, which is Clarice Starling. The lambs that need to be silenced are, after all, hers; the book is about her growing into a new role, undergoing a metamorphosis just as total as the one Gumb desires but can't actually accomplish, just as surely as if she were one of Gumb's moths. Hence her name, Starling, with its connotations of baby birds (ducklings, goslings). Both Jack Crawford and Lecter (a name with preachy overtones of lecture or lectern, as well as reader, as in the French lecteur; Harris' names are almost Dickensian) himself see something in Clarice (which means bright, brilliant, clear) that is there to be developed.

The moment comes when Clarice is freezing Dr Chilton out of her key interview with Lecter at the hospital, and he lets slip he has 'a ticket for Holiday On Ice'. In a flash Clarice has apprehended his utter pathos; it's as if she's turned a toggle switch in herself. She reads him the way Lecter reads people, the way Will Graham or Crawford try to inhabit and understand. Jonathan Demme understands this perfectly, and he structures the movie around Jodie Foster, who inhabits the role in what may well be the best performance of her fine career.

It's also important to mention the film because Harris was so well served by the early films of his books. Black Sunday is if anything a better thriller as a movie than a novel. And Michael Mann's 1986 film of Red Dragon, the first 'Lecter' novel, I think may well have had more impact on Harris than is recognised. What's crucial here is shown by the film's change of title, to Manhunter, which signals the fact that, as in Silence, the central character is the investigator. For Michael Mann the central story is Will Graham's struggle with his own talent to inhabit the killer's mind, which threatens his ability to have a relationship. As with Clarice and Jame, Graham's inner struggles paralleled those of the Tooth Fairy's, whose own drives affect his ability to have relationships, until he meets someone literally blind to his 'fault'.

Manhunter wasn't a hit, although it is another brilliant adaptation. Compare it to the more faithful, but also more lackadaisical Red Dragon, where, for example, Graham captures Lecter because he's read a note Lecter's written for himself in his Larousse, translating ris de veau as 'sweetbreads'. As if Lecter would need to remind himself. Some of Manhunter is reflected in Silence, particularly the way Tom Noonan's performance as Francis Dollarhyde is echoed in Ted Levine's Gumb, and in the way the lighting is both dark and brash. But note some of the differences, particularly in Jack Graham, from Dennis Farina's upfront macho to Scott Glenn's more inward strength. I do wonder if perhaps Harris' original intention was, in the wake of the death of Crawford's wife, to have him and Lecter be, in effect, in competition for Starling, two older men chasing the same prize.

But the biggest difference between Manhunter and Silence may be in the Lecters. In many ways I prefer Brian Cox, who seems more dynamic, perhaps more threatening, certainly moreso sexually. But beneath the more obvious surface acting, Anthony Hopkins captures something Harris just touches on, in one description of Lecter's body 'arched like a dancer'. Hopkins' performance is all about that precise physical control, which echoes the mental control which defines him. Ironically, within that control, he often seems as if he is compelled to act, driven by internal morals and mores. This is another way the movies seem to have influenced the books, because in the film Silence Lecter and Hopkins stole centre stage, and became the audience's focus. In the first two novels the grand guignol of his character is far less interesting than his effect on both killers and cops; he's more like a horror version of The Shadow.

Though I recommend a re-rereading, this new edition is worthy also for its new introduction by Harris himself, in which he details some of the inspiration for Lecter, which he found in a Mexican prison, while interviewing an American serial killer for Argosy magazine. And he also explains why this is the 25^th anniversary of the novel, of the moment when he finished it, wanting the reassurance of the presence of those he loved, and the memory of the moment when, as a child, he killed a bird and wept. The other thing Silence is about is empathy, and Harris doesn't let us forget it.

The Silence Of The Lambs (25^th Anniversary Edition)

by Thomas Harris

Arrow, £7.99, 9780099586579

NOTE: This essay will appear also at Shots ezine (www.shotsmag.co.uk)