THE darkest hours for Winston Churchill, the politician, would come after the election of 1945. From then on, his popularity would go downhill, his participation in some of the crucial strategies during World War II—including the bombing of the city of Dresden, which reduced the place to rubbles—questioned. But in the film Darkest Hour, we see the brightest moments for Churchill, the patriot and plotter.
The war against the Germans would be officially announced as coming to an end on May 7, 1945. Ironically and with great historical histrionics, the events of the Second World War that would propel Churchill to some kind of immortality would also take place in May.
It is May 1940. Germany has started marching past the borders of many countries. The Parliament, particularly the Labour Party, is asking Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister then, to resign. Many feel he’s not capable of handling the brutal might of the Nazi now threatening to occupy the Western Hemisphere. The Parliament, by way of the Conservative Party, is looking for a replacement. The one most likely to succeed Chamberlain is Lord Halifax, known to enjoy the trust and friendship of King George VI. Lord Halifax, for some reason, does not want the position, not yet anyway. Everyone turns to the next person that could be chosen: Lord Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, a position that makes him the political head of the Royal Navy. Churchill is not uninitiated to wars having been part of World War I. And yet it is that participation in the previous world war, which pitted England and France against Germany also, that makes the man the weakest, if not the most despised choice. Churchill is blamed for the bad decisions made in that war.
As there’s no one else to be made Prime Minister, Churchill is elected. The next few days in May of 1940 allow us to see the workings of England’s Parliament and the brain of what we acknowledge now as the bigger-than-life persona of a Winston Churchill.
Not trusted by the King and unpopular among the giants of the Parliament, Churchill faces the beginning of the Nazi invasion. At a certain point, a reported 3 million German soldiers are waiting to attack another European country; at many points, European countries are, piece by piece, being occupied by the forces of Hitler: Belgium, France, etc. At a certain point, too, England under Churchill is looking to the German army crossing the sea and occupying the “island kingdom.” The war that Churchill is facing is not only the one initiated by Germany but also those spun by politicians who favor peace negotiations over war even as the mediating would be in the hands of Fascist Italy. But Churchill is Churchill, if we are to believe in the film. And as Darkest Hour puts it, Churchill is a man who scares even King George.
The film creates a narrative built on a series of dialogical pas-de-deux: scenes that pit Churchill against or place him with certain characters, the most engaging of which are those Churchill does with King George; Elizabeth Layton, his secretary; and Clementine, his wife. It is in those scenes that Churchill gets to describe himself or is defined. In the first lunch with King George, the king’s admission that Churchill scares him makes the politician stammer. Why would he scare the King? King George tells Churchill it’s his way of talking, which does not prepare him for the kind of words he will use, words that may insult or wound. To this, Churchill excuses his manners as brought about by “wildness in the blood,” and for the emotions that are unbridled. Burdened by the decision to wage war or declare peace, Churchill is told by his wife that you are “strong because you are imperfect” and you are “wise because you have doubts.”
With Miss Layton, the secretary, Churchill becomes human. He sees the handsome man in a photo on the table of the lovely girl, and asks if he is the beau. Layton says he is her brother and he did not survive. In that very brief moment, we see the man who tells the King he was never close to his father, who was like a god that was “busy elsewhere.”
All these sketches about Winston Churchill are realized with depth because of one actor: Gary Oldman. Many critics are one in saying, this one included, that the truth that grips us about Churchill is no more the work of history or the events that make men—and women—rise above the throng, but the power, the wit and brilliance, the gestures and glances of one Gary Oldman.
We are pulled in and charmed by that Churchill who has ceased to be the historical figure immortalized in books of speeches and politics, but by this hero, whoever he is, who has faced the inevitable and won for us a war, a plot, a thought, a possibility.
The makeup created by Kazuhiro Tsuji has been recognized as the best by the Oscars. It is said that Oldman had to undergo some 200 hours to be fitted with that face. In the end, it is the mind, the flesh behind the prosthetics that speak to us. Gary Oldman never disappears from the technology of make-believe.
The film begins in colors that are in deep gray and faded blue, reminding us of the old photographs. Lights from some unknown source are cast on whoever is speaking. Crisis makes saints and magicians even of politicians. Toward the end, as Churchill finishes that famous speech about not surrendering, papers rain like confetti, endless rain of white fluttering in the air, telling us this is cinema after all.
Being cinema and being a historical retelling do not always go together. Search historical accounts and find that the ride in the underground never took place. This is that part of Darkest Hour where Churchill gets down from his car and walks to the subway. He rides one of the trains and, inside, gets to know about the ordinary people. He tells them what he’s about to do, and that is read the speech where he will favor the peace negotiation with Germany. The people in the trains chorusing “Never” becomes the basis for the turnaround made by Churchill. And, as they say, the rest is history even when history is not the basis for what grandly follows.
History writ large always has grand persons. Darkest Hour boasts of a stellar cast. Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill shows that she’s the woman who could outshout Winston Churchill. Elegant even during wartime, Thomas’s royal lady has blue blood coursing through those lines and tensions. Kristin Scott Thomas is noted for her Oscar nominated role in The English Patient. As Elizabeth Layton, Lily James is all vulnerability and strength. James fleshes out a woman whose delicate manners survive the rough and combative reflexes of Winston Churchill. What seems like a nondescript role, the King George VI of Ben Mendelsohn, an Australian actor, is a study in restraint about a monarch able to hide his self-consciousness of his part in England’s history. Still, it is Gary Oldman, the actor, who rides the storm of historical account through sheer confidence in a character created by social conditions even as he creates the conditions of his own soul.
Darkest Hour is written by Anthony McCarten, known for The Theory of Everything, which is based on the life of the late theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. The film is directed by Joe Wright, the man behind the disturbing Atonement. Darkest Hour is produced by Perfect World Pictures and Working Title Films, and released through Focus Pictures and Universal Pictures.
Postscript: For the student of history and cinema, it is good to watch Netflix’s The Crown, where Winston Churchill is depicted in a less-than-flattering light.