Darkest Hour

(Warning: contains spoilers for Darkest Hour)

There seems to be a focus on World War 2 at the moment - 2017 alone brought Churchill, Their Finest, Dunkirk, to name three.  2018 begins with Oscar hopeful Darkest Hour, tracing the early days of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister for the United Kingdom in 1940.

Gary Oldman well on his way to nicotine poisoning...

Gary Oldman is already garnering much praise for his portrayal of the titular character.  At the time of writing, he's received the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild award, AACTA international award, Alliance of Women Film Journalists award, Critics Choice award, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association award, Hollywood Film award, New York Film Critics award, Online Film Critics Society award, Palm Springs International Film Festival award, St Louis Film Critics Association award, Washington DC Area Film Critics Association award, and Women Film Critics Circle Award.  So by the time he receives the BAFTA and the Oscar (both of which seem inevitable), there will be nothing left to say in the acceptance speeches and nobody left to thank.  Oldman has ticked all the Oscars boxes - troubled, historical figure, overcoming adversity and deliberately disfiguring himself in order to look the part.  He's taken things to Daniel Day-Lewis lengths of Method by accidentally giving himself nicotine poisoning during the filming (due to a frankly ridiculous amount of cigars).  He has been a pub discussion favourite for while ("who is the best actor never to have won an Oscar?") and now it seems likely that the Academy will reward his depiction of the wartime PM.  Deservedly so.  Oldman (as well as being unrecognisable in makeup and prosthetics) portrays a figure who is derided for his past decisions, distrusted by his own party, given a job he doesn't necessarily want at a time when every decision matters, whilst also being simultaneously absolutely sure of his decisions and absolutely full of doubt and fear at the "what ifs..." of them.  His introduction is great - his reputation as cantankerous and difficult being spelled out to his new secretary - Miss Layton - on her first day as she is ushered into his bedroom/study.  Our first glimpse of Churchill is as he lights up his first cigar of the morning, and his familiar features are caught briefly by matchlight.  As the film progresses, we see many sides of Churchill and Oldman plays them with aplomb - the blustering, angry, difficult to please Churchill, the catatonically depressed Churchill, the trying-to-be-better Churchill, the family-man Churchill and the barnstorming public speaker Churchill.  To give you some idea of how good Gary Oldman is in this part - Daniel Day-Lewis is also up for the Best Actor Oscar this year.  Nobody is talking about Daniel Day-Lewis.

To be fair, he will really go out of his way to be the best at being sad now...

Whether it will win Best Picture though is up for debate.  Certainly, Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything) has written a compelling script - more political thriller than wartime biopic, and loudly trumpeting the belief that words do more than guns.  It takes careful steps to explain what is going on on both a global scale (the reticence of Roosevelt to help feels like a personal blow) and national scale (with the scenes of wartime everyday London).  As a result, events like the Dunkirk evacuation feel like they have actual meaning and consequence, in a way that Nolan's Dunkirk didn't quite master.  However, as with The Theory of Everything it presumes some knowledge of the main character and the people around him.  So without knowledge of, for example, Churchill's prolonged and recurrent episodes of depression, you may be forgiven for wondering why he's sitting on a bed in a state of undress, staring at the wall.  Some better explanation of what all the politicians are playing at wouldn't go amiss either (all very House of Cards, with backstabbing aplenty, but I wonder how much sense it makes to an uninformed audience).  It also seems that McCarten did some careful plotting to bring the action to Dunkirk, and knew that he wanted to get to the rousing "We shall fight on the beaches" speech to end the film, but wasn't quite sure how to couple the two together.  Thus, there is an entirely fictitious scene in which Churchill rides the Underground, meets the "common folk" who all tell him that everything he's doing is brilliant and they definitely want to keep fighting - a scene so oddly specific in its naming of the characters, that I assumed it must be a random true anecdote.  It's not, which means the film wanders needlessly into schmaltz.
There's some interesting suggestions peppered throughout the film, however.  For example, that Neville Chamberlain's (Ronald Pickup) decision to support Churchill rather than encourage party dissent (if Chamberlain agreed with Churchill's speech, he would wave his handkerchief so that everyone would follow his lead) was a symptom of his progressing terminal cancer, rather than a change of heart.  Or that Churchill offered counsel to King George VI about whether to move his family and govern from Canada.  McCarten's poetic licence feels a little less artificial here.

As with Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), I am not sure why Joe Wright is not recognised for his work as director.  His direction provides a striking film - from tiny cramped bunkers to grand state rooms, the direction makes for a beautiful film, with well used shards of light, ascending and descending lift shafts, and exhilarating aerial shots of the suicide attack at Calais.  Wright's directorial choices make the film slow down and speed up at exactly the right plot points and as such, the 2 hour film zips by.

George VI hoped his mirror was broken...

There's not too much for the women of the film to do, and the success of whether or not it's a feminist friendly film rests on what you think the film is.  Both Clementine Churchill (Dame Kristen Scott Thomas) and Elizabeth Layton (Lily James) both exist to more fully flesh out the facets of Churchill, which is fine if you contend that Darkest Hour is a Churchill biopic, but less so if you don't.  That said, Scott Thomas and James do a lot to make their small character roles memorable and their actions help progress the plot.

As for whether Oldman's Churchill is accurate or not, Elizabeth Layton (who became Elizabeth Nel) was Churchill's personal secretary from 1941-1945.  In her memoires, she describes Churchill thus; "Sometimes [while dictating a letter] his voice would become thick with emotion, and occasionally a tear would run down his cheek. As inspiration came to him, he would gesture with his hands, just as one knew he would be doing when he delivered his speech, and the sentences would roll out with so much feeling that one died with the soldiers, toiled with the workers, hated the enemy, strained for victory ... [T]hat great man – who could at any time be impatient, kind, irritable, crushing, generous, inspiring, difficult, alarming, amusing, unpredictable, considerate, seemingly impossible to please, charming, demanding, inconsiderate, quick to anger and quick to forgive – was unforgettable. One loved him with a deep devotion. Difficult to work for – yes, mostly; loveable – always; amusing – without fail."

That is definitely the Churchill of this film. 

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Just this, really...