Movie Review: 'Darkest Hour'
Directed by: Joe Wright
Written by: Anthony McCarten
Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, Ronald Pickup, Stephen Dillane
On December 22, 2017, Universal Pictures released Darkest Hour, a historical dramatization that depicts the ascension of Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) from First Lord of the Admiralty to Prime Minister and the immense challenges he faced in the spring of 1940 - Great Britain's "darkest hour" during World War II.
Written by Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything) and directed by Joe Wright (Atonement), Darkest Hour earned six Academy Award nominations at the 2017 Oscars ceremony and took home two trophies (Best Actor - Gary Oldman and Best Makeup and Hairstyling - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, and Lucy Sibbick), plus another armful of award and accolades at the Golden Globes, British Film Awards, Austin Film Critics Awards, and other film fetes.
Darkest Hour covers roughly a four-week period in May-June 1940, which saw the beginning of the German invasion of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk (an event which was also the subject of another 2017 film, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk.)
It is, as you might imagine, a dark time for the British Empire. Nazi Germany, having conquered Poland the previous autumn, has launched an invasion of Western Europe. Already, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht has overrun and occupied Norway, Denmark, and Holland. Now, as the Germans carry out Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), tiny Belgium is on the brink of collapse, and German panzers have passed through the "impenetrable" Ardennes forest and broken past the French defenses at Sedan and elsewhere.
In the British Parliament, angry politicians are calling on Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) to resign. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement towards Hitler and lack of decisive leadership in the early stages of the war have led to this disaster. Great Britain needs more a more vigorous head of government to helm the ship of state during this crisis, and Chamberlain clearly is not up to the task.
In Darkest Hour, King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) prefers his friend Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) be named as Chamberlain's replacement as leader of a coalition government. The king is not certain that Churchill, a Conservative who is presently First Lord of the Admiralty, is a good choice to lead Britain either in an all-out war against the Nazis - or to negotiate a settlement with Der Fuhrer, if it comes to that.
But to everyone's surprise, Churchill ends up being summoned to accept the twin portfolios of the King's Prime Minister and Minister of State for War. This is a controversial choice; Winston Churchill masterminded the failed Dardanelles Campaign at Gallipoli during the previous war, and some of his recent decisions - such as the mining of neutral Norway's territorial waters and the promise of more Royal Air Force squadrons to France- raise eyebrows in Parliament and elsewhere.
Like 2004's Downfall, which told the story of Hitler's last days in 1945 through the eyes of his youngest secretary, Darkest Hour makes Elizabeth Leyton (Lily James) the audience's proxy. Depicted in the film as a pretty new arrival into Churchill's inner circle (she wasn't hired until a year later in real life), Leyton serves as the link to between the now-legendary Churchill and us. We follow Elizabeth - and her irascible, hard-drinking boss - not only to the halls of power in Whitehall but also Winston Churchill's living quarters at 10 Downing Street, where he lives with his loving but formidable wife Clementine (Kristin Scott-Thomas).
In this drama, which takes a lot of artistic license with history, Churchill not only must deal with strategy and tactics to fight the Germans, but he also has to cajole U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (David Strathairn in a voice-only role) to send as much military aid as he can at a time when America is deeply divided between a majority of isolationists and a minority of interventionists.
Oh, and did I mention the British politicians who are considering negotiations through the auspices of Hitler's ally, Mussolini? Well, Churchill has to contend with these individuals to. And while all of this political maneuvering is going on, the British Expeditionary Force is retreating toward the English Channel with little hope for rescue from the beaches of Dunkirk.
My Take
If I were a college student doing a research paper on this critical period during World War II, I would not use Darkest Hour as a primary (or even secondary) source for information.
Though it is based on the true story of Winston Churchill's first weeks as Prime Minister, Anthony McCarten and Joe Wright give viewers a dramatic but somewhat fictionalized view of Britain's darkest hour.
The broad strokes of the war situation, of course, reflect historical reality. King George VI was reluctant to accept Churchill as Prime Minister. The German invasion of the West was unstoppable and not even the belligerent Winston could come up with a way to win the ensuing Battle of France. And there was a faction within British society that thought the war was madness and that maybe an accommodation could be made with Herr Hitler.
Other details in Darkest Hour that are based on fact include Churchill's habit of leaving the underground bunker and, on occasion, go out and talk to the average citizen to take the measure of public sentiment.
However, there's no record that Churchill, whose mother, Jennie Churchill, was American, ever left his car in heavy traffic and wandered down into an Underground (subway) station to see what British men and women thought about the war so far.
It is this scene, above all others, that I think seems rather off when you look at Churchill's track record in the British government and as an unapologetic imperialist.
In the "Churchill Goes Underground" sequence, McCarten and Wright have Gary Oldman's Churchill getting away from his armored limo and sneaking down to a subway station close to Whitehall, where Parliament and Britain's military establishment are located.
Churchill then talks to a cross-section of British subjects, including a young mother with her baby, a black man from the British Caribbean colonies, and some journeymen with their workers' caps on their heads.
Though Churchill was not an evil person (as many people in former British colonies, especially India, claim), it's hard to believe that he'd speak to a dark-skinned man the way he does in Darkest Hour. Given his past record as a true believer in the British Empire and his insistence that it remain intact after the war, this scene doesn't strike me as realistic.
Also, Churchill's speeches were never broadcast live to the nation from either 10 Downing Street or the halls of Parliament, as Darkest Hour wants viewers to believe. No one in 1940 heard Winston's "we shall fight on the beaches" speech on the BBC on the same day that he spoke them in the House of Commons. The recording of that famous jeremiad was made in 1949 for the BBC's archives....nine years after the original speech was given.
Also, the relationship between FDR and Churchill was not as fraught with suspicion and disillusion as it is depicted in Darkest Hour. President Roosevelt wished to help Great Britain but had his hands tied by an isolationist (and Republican-controlled) Congress. So the phone conversation between Oldman's Churchill and David Strathairn's (disembodied) Roosevelt is a figment of the filmmakers' imagination.
Written by Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything) and directed by Joe Wright (Atonement), Darkest Hour earned six Academy Award nominations at the 2017 Oscars ceremony and took home two trophies (Best Actor - Gary Oldman and Best Makeup and Hairstyling - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, and Lucy Sibbick), plus another armful of award and accolades at the Golden Globes, British Film Awards, Austin Film Critics Awards, and other film fetes.
Darkest Hour covers roughly a four-week period in May-June 1940, which saw the beginning of the German invasion of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk (an event which was also the subject of another 2017 film, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk.)
It is, as you might imagine, a dark time for the British Empire. Nazi Germany, having conquered Poland the previous autumn, has launched an invasion of Western Europe. Already, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht has overrun and occupied Norway, Denmark, and Holland. Now, as the Germans carry out Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), tiny Belgium is on the brink of collapse, and German panzers have passed through the "impenetrable" Ardennes forest and broken past the French defenses at Sedan and elsewhere.
In the British Parliament, angry politicians are calling on Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) to resign. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement towards Hitler and lack of decisive leadership in the early stages of the war have led to this disaster. Great Britain needs more a more vigorous head of government to helm the ship of state during this crisis, and Chamberlain clearly is not up to the task.
In Darkest Hour, King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) prefers his friend Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) be named as Chamberlain's replacement as leader of a coalition government. The king is not certain that Churchill, a Conservative who is presently First Lord of the Admiralty, is a good choice to lead Britain either in an all-out war against the Nazis - or to negotiate a settlement with Der Fuhrer, if it comes to that.
But to everyone's surprise, Churchill ends up being summoned to accept the twin portfolios of the King's Prime Minister and Minister of State for War. This is a controversial choice; Winston Churchill masterminded the failed Dardanelles Campaign at Gallipoli during the previous war, and some of his recent decisions - such as the mining of neutral Norway's territorial waters and the promise of more Royal Air Force squadrons to France- raise eyebrows in Parliament and elsewhere.
Like 2004's Downfall, which told the story of Hitler's last days in 1945 through the eyes of his youngest secretary, Darkest Hour makes Elizabeth Leyton (Lily James) the audience's proxy. Depicted in the film as a pretty new arrival into Churchill's inner circle (she wasn't hired until a year later in real life), Leyton serves as the link to between the now-legendary Churchill and us. We follow Elizabeth - and her irascible, hard-drinking boss - not only to the halls of power in Whitehall but also Winston Churchill's living quarters at 10 Downing Street, where he lives with his loving but formidable wife Clementine (Kristin Scott-Thomas).
In this drama, which takes a lot of artistic license with history, Churchill not only must deal with strategy and tactics to fight the Germans, but he also has to cajole U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (David Strathairn in a voice-only role) to send as much military aid as he can at a time when America is deeply divided between a majority of isolationists and a minority of interventionists.
Oh, and did I mention the British politicians who are considering negotiations through the auspices of Hitler's ally, Mussolini? Well, Churchill has to contend with these individuals to. And while all of this political maneuvering is going on, the British Expeditionary Force is retreating toward the English Channel with little hope for rescue from the beaches of Dunkirk.
My Take
If I were a college student doing a research paper on this critical period during World War II, I would not use Darkest Hour as a primary (or even secondary) source for information.
Though it is based on the true story of Winston Churchill's first weeks as Prime Minister, Anthony McCarten and Joe Wright give viewers a dramatic but somewhat fictionalized view of Britain's darkest hour.
The broad strokes of the war situation, of course, reflect historical reality. King George VI was reluctant to accept Churchill as Prime Minister. The German invasion of the West was unstoppable and not even the belligerent Winston could come up with a way to win the ensuing Battle of France. And there was a faction within British society that thought the war was madness and that maybe an accommodation could be made with Herr Hitler.
Other details in Darkest Hour that are based on fact include Churchill's habit of leaving the underground bunker and, on occasion, go out and talk to the average citizen to take the measure of public sentiment.
However, there's no record that Churchill, whose mother, Jennie Churchill, was American, ever left his car in heavy traffic and wandered down into an Underground (subway) station to see what British men and women thought about the war so far.
It is this scene, above all others, that I think seems rather off when you look at Churchill's track record in the British government and as an unapologetic imperialist.
Winston Churchill: [riding the train] What are you all
staring at? Have you never seen, uh, the prime minister ride the Underground
before?
In the "Churchill Goes Underground" sequence, McCarten and Wright have Gary Oldman's Churchill getting away from his armored limo and sneaking down to a subway station close to Whitehall, where Parliament and Britain's military establishment are located.
Churchill then talks to a cross-section of British subjects, including a young mother with her baby, a black man from the British Caribbean colonies, and some journeymen with their workers' caps on their heads.
Though Churchill was not an evil person (as many people in former British colonies, especially India, claim), it's hard to believe that he'd speak to a dark-skinned man the way he does in Darkest Hour. Given his past record as a true believer in the British Empire and his insistence that it remain intact after the war, this scene doesn't strike me as realistic.
Also, Churchill's speeches were never broadcast live to the nation from either 10 Downing Street or the halls of Parliament, as Darkest Hour wants viewers to believe. No one in 1940 heard Winston's "we shall fight on the beaches" speech on the BBC on the same day that he spoke them in the House of Commons. The recording of that famous jeremiad was made in 1949 for the BBC's archives....nine years after the original speech was given.
Winston Churchill: Do I have your, uh, permission, uh, to
send, uh, an aircraft carrier to pick up the P-40 fighter planes we purchased
from you? Mr. President?
President Roosevelt: Well, you-you've got me there again.
New law preventing transshipment of military equipment.
Winston Churchill: Uh, but we paid for them. We-we paid for
them with the money that we... that we borrowed from you.
Also, the relationship between FDR and Churchill was not as fraught with suspicion and disillusion as it is depicted in Darkest Hour. President Roosevelt wished to help Great Britain but had his hands tied by an isolationist (and Republican-controlled) Congress. So the phone conversation between Oldman's Churchill and David Strathairn's (disembodied) Roosevelt is a figment of the filmmakers' imagination.
Still. as entertainment, the movie works rather well. The pace is good; for a movie that is mostly about British politics, grand strategy, and wartime propaganda and motivation, Darkest Hour moves quickly through its two hours and five minutes of running time.
Predictably, due to the film's focus on politics and characterizations, this is not a film with a lot of battle scenes. There are a few short sequences of German bombers bombing BEF positions in France and a couple of other "war film" clips, but there are no major reenactments of the Germans' blitz in the West or of the evacuation from Dunkirk; there is another 2017 film that delves into that episode, and it, too, competed for Best Picture (Releasing two films with similar settings the same year was probably not a good idea; Dunkirk and Darkest Hour were both nominated in this category, but lost to The Shape of Water.)
If there's a reason for the average viewer who's not into history to see Darkest Hour, it's to see Gary Oldman as Churchill. The slim actor is hardly the first guy I'd have cast as the portly cigar-smoking, hard-drinking Prime Minister who went on to lead Britain as part of the victorious Grand Alliance, but Oldman gives viewers a riveting performance. Yes, he has to wear a "fat suit" and subject himself to being hidden under a lot of makeup and prosthetics, but he is Winston Churchill.
The rest of the cast (Kristin Scott-Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, Ronald Pickup, Stephen Dillane, among others) is excellent. I think that Scott-Thomas is perhaps a bit too thin and tall to play Clementine (Clemmie) Churchill, but she's always interesting to watch onscreen. Mendelsohn, who plays King George VI, is perhaps more familiar to moviegoers as the ambitious Imperial Commander Orson Krennic from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It truly is a treat to see him portray a decent and caring monarch, and Mendelsohn does a good job as the shy but determined "Bertie," the father of Britain's current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
Predictably, due to the film's focus on politics and characterizations, this is not a film with a lot of battle scenes. There are a few short sequences of German bombers bombing BEF positions in France and a couple of other "war film" clips, but there are no major reenactments of the Germans' blitz in the West or of the evacuation from Dunkirk; there is another 2017 film that delves into that episode, and it, too, competed for Best Picture (Releasing two films with similar settings the same year was probably not a good idea; Dunkirk and Darkest Hour were both nominated in this category, but lost to The Shape of Water.)
If there's a reason for the average viewer who's not into history to see Darkest Hour, it's to see Gary Oldman as Churchill. The slim actor is hardly the first guy I'd have cast as the portly cigar-smoking, hard-drinking Prime Minister who went on to lead Britain as part of the victorious Grand Alliance, but Oldman gives viewers a riveting performance. Yes, he has to wear a "fat suit" and subject himself to being hidden under a lot of makeup and prosthetics, but he is Winston Churchill.
The rest of the cast (Kristin Scott-Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, Ronald Pickup, Stephen Dillane, among others) is excellent. I think that Scott-Thomas is perhaps a bit too thin and tall to play Clementine (Clemmie) Churchill, but she's always interesting to watch onscreen. Mendelsohn, who plays King George VI, is perhaps more familiar to moviegoers as the ambitious Imperial Commander Orson Krennic from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It truly is a treat to see him portray a decent and caring monarch, and Mendelsohn does a good job as the shy but determined "Bertie," the father of Britain's current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
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| (C) 2018 Universal Pictures Home Entertainment |
If you missed Darkest Hour during its theatrical run earlier this year, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released the movie on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copy on February 27, shortly before the Academy Awards were telecast in March.
The Blu-ray's best asset is, of course, the film itself. It is nicely transferred onto a 1080p Blu-ray disc (BD) and showcases Darkest Hour with a clean and sharp high definition image and a clear and well-mixed Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio track. The extra features consist of a feature-length audio commentary track with director Joe Wright, and two featurettes: Into Darkest Hour and Gary Oldman: Becoming Churchill.
Blu-ray Specifications:
Video
- Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
- Resolution: 1080p
- Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
- Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
- English: Dolby Atmos
- English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
- French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
- Spanish: Dolby Digital Plus 7.1
Subtitles
- English SDH, French, Spanish
Discs
- Blu-ray Disc
- Two-disc set (1 BD-50, 1 DVD)
- Digital copy
- Movies Anywhere
- DVD copy
Packaging
- Slipcover in original pressing
Playback
- Region A, B
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