Darkest Hour

A tour de force from Gary Oldman as he portrays Winston Churchill in his first few months of office at the start of WWII. Oddly enough though, aside from a few brief appearances from Kristin Scott-Thomas, the rest of the cast in this historical biopic are really quite unremarkable. The speeches are delivered magnificently; but there are too many speculative machinations going on - not least those involving King George VI - that do bring the credibility of this into question. There was plenty of accurately documented reportage from this time to enable Anthony McCarten to pen an entertaining script based more on the facts of this unsteady period of Churchill's premiership; Dunkirk; his relationship with Halifax & Roosevelt etc. rather than invent storylines. The attention to detail is superb and Oldman well deserved his second Oscar.

I thought I might have seen this a couple pf years ago, but I still enjoyed it. There have been a few movies about Churchill’s rise to power at the outset of World War II. This one seems to cover the least amount of ground, focusing on his thought processes, the political climate and his personal life leading only up to the beginning of the Dunkirk evacuation. I thought there were two things the film did well with its strong writing and actor portrayal: the first was to present Churchill, a larger than life character, as just a life-size person, with the foibles and weaknesses he carried around with him. The other strength was in building depth into some of the secondary characters. His new aide typist, for example, is ready to quit after Churchill yells at her unfairly. It would have been easy to rehabilitate him for that temper tantrum by having him soften towards her and convince her to stay on. Instead she leaves the building, is handed an important communication from the king, and decides for herself to stay on and do the job. Churchill is the focal point pf the film, but again and again he shares the limelight onscreen with others like this, such as the extended scene in the subway. So within it’s narrow focus, I think the movie does a great job telling the story of this interlude from history.

Gary Oldman was superb as Churchill.