Darkest Hour
(UK, 125 min.)
Dir. Joe Wright, Writ.
Anthony McCarten
Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristin
Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup
 |
| Focus Features |
Give Gary Oldman every award on the planet for Darkest Hour. His turn as late British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill is a titanic performance. This latest film
from director Joe Wright (Anna Karenina)
offers a fine companion piece to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk with its deftly plotted and time sensitive dramatization of
Britain’s war efforts, specifically with the evacuation of Dunkirk, and a
rousing parable of great leadership. But where Dunkirk excels as a true ensemble piece, Darkest Hour succeeds as a star vehicle. It’s Oldman’s finest hour.
Churchill is not an especially savoury character when Darkest Hour introduces him nearly ten
minutes into the picture. His new secretary, Elizabeth (Cinderella’s Lily James), is clearly one of many girls cycled
through the politician’s employment. Following a briefing on the job that could
easily be a pep talk before going to work for Miranda Priestly, Elizabeth scurries
into the room and Churchill greets her with the surliest hello imaginable. He’s
still in bed and barking orders from behind a cigar whilst enjoying a whisky
for breakfast.
Things improve after a shaky go of it, since Churchill has
wanted this promotion all his life. His meetings with King George VI (Ben
Mendelsohn, Mississippi
Grind) let us watch a political animal at work as Churchill skillfully
finds common ground with a King who didn’t think he was the man for the job.
Oldman’s scenes with Mendelsohn are especially strong, even if Mendelsohn has
the unenviable misfortune of giving his nuanced turn of George when Colin Firth’s
Oscar-winning performance is still a recent memory. However, the comparison
helps one see that Oldman’s Churchill will undoubtedly be the one to define the
character in film just as Firth’s does for the king.
Oldman relishes the faulty and theatrical elements of
Churchill’s persona. His performance, Wright’s direction, and the script by
Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything) humanize this hero from the outset. Here’s a man who yells,
smokes, drinks, mumbles, and dictates his thoughts while in the bath or on the
loo. He is, in a sense, an everyman despite coming from the upper crust of
British society that lets a man run the country without ever having ridden the
tube. (A fact he admits after receiving notice that he’s to become the next
Prime Minister.) Oldman, underneath pounds of make-up, gives us a blustery and
passionate blow-hard of man. He’s a bulldog with trembling jowls and a gravelly
bark. And he demands respect as Oldman commands the screen.
Wright has a great flair for melodrama and he rebounds after
the misfire of Pan with this stately
showpiece that draws upon the great overtures of his direction. Each scene of Darkest Hour is bathed in a grand
theatricality—not the literal theatricality of Anna Karenina, mind you, but rather elegant theatrical flourishes
that spare no expense in the aesthetics. The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel steeps
the corridors of Parliament and Buckingham Palace in regal swathes of natural
light, elevating Churchill, but also humbling him as a man more comfortable in
smoky rooms and shadows. Delbonnel’s fluid camerawork glides throughout the
interiors and underground war rooms, giving us an all-seeing eye to history in
the making while Dario Marianelli’s score intricately accentuates the tense
passage of time and the urgency of the matter at hand.
The film takes some great dramatic liberties including a
fictional scene in which Churchill takes a ride in the tube and gets to know
his fellow citizens. He faces the awful choice of negotiating a peace deal with
Germany to avoid putting the nation in jeopardy, but surrendering to the Nazis
doesn’t sit right with his conscience or his sense of the British character. As
Churchill rides the tube and gains the notice of his fellow passengers, he
seeks their advice on whether they’d prefer to wave the white flag or the Union
Jack. The sequence is the kind of liberty that might make or break Darkest Hour for some audiences, but
Wright lands just the right tone for the exchange and Oldman relishes the
material as this cozy, easy-going Churchill proves himself a man of the people.
Darkest Hour smartly
juggles Churchill’s professional struggles with his personal ones. Scenes at
home show a family’s sacrifice for one man’s dreams and power. Kristin Scott
Thomas gives an excellent supporting turn as Clementine Churchill, a coldly
supportive woman who can’t mask what she’s given up in her husband’s road to
office. Whether delivering a double-edged toast to her husband’s new title or
sitting alone, posing for photographers while Churchill addresses the nation,
Scott Thomas’s chilly, dignified performance is one of subtle self-sacrifice.
The story of Churchill’s effort in aligning Britain’s
rickety boat and a turbulent Parliament is very effective in McCarten’s
effectively tightened, focused, and streamlined script that rarely leaves the
corridors of power. The concentration of Darkest
Hour as the man with the unenviable weight of a nation on his shoulders
elevates the film above the level of a standard biopic by giving a fine and
thoughtful portrait of Churchill’s leadership during one pivotal moment in his
career. There are resonant lessons from which the leaders of today could learn,
too, as Churchill surrounds himself with allies and enemies to make for
thoughtful debates that tackle Britain’s war strategy from all angles before
making the difficult calls. With Oldman at the helm, Darkest Hour makes for riveting drama with its clipped and polite
exchanges between barbed Brits. An Oscar is long overdue.
