Darkest Hour: Review and History
Darkest Hour is a drama directed by Joe Wright and starring Gary Oldman as Sir Winston Churchill. Given that I have been studying the career of Churchill in my History course at school, and the fact that in my course I have come to learn that Churchill was in some ways quite awful (I'll get into this in a moment), as soon as Darkest Hour came to cinemas yesterday I just had to see it. I had to know how they would present him, the "Greatest Briton Ever".
The Review
I must say that this was the first time ever that my no-trailer-watching policy betrayed me. For a couple of years now I have refused to watch trailers as they can so easily ruin the suspense or important plot beats; however, with Darkest Hour I had expected something very different which made what I saw slightly underwhelming. I was expecting an action-packed representation of Churchill as Prime Minister as his country faced the Battle of Britain or something along those lines. In reality, Darkest Hour tells the story of Churchill's first couple of weeks as Prime Minister as he faced strong opposition from within his cabinet and had to decide whether to proceed in battle with Nazi forces or to enter into peace negotiations via Italy. One must be aware before going into the film that it involves two hours of talking, not two hours of fighting on the scale of Hacksaw Ridge or Saving Private Ryan or even Dunkirk. (This is something I'll get into in another post but I did not like Dunkirk. I appreciate Nolan's aim in Dunkirk but I don't think he achieved it at all.)
Gary Oldman's characterisation of Winston Churchill was so spot-on it brought me to tears. Something as simple as the way he walked really affected me as I truly felt as though I was watching the real Churchill bumble around. Gary Oldman completely disappeared and, in his place: Sir Winston Churchill. A truly incredible performance. What's more, the prosthetics were also great - his physical, visible transformation into the historical man was also very impressive.
This film also showed us a range of very interesting relationships. Some of the more moving ones included the relationship between Churchill and his secretary/typist Elizabeth Layton (played by Lily James) and between Churchill and King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn). These were part of the way Churchill was shown to have more humility and sympathy in contrast to the hard, stony exterior other parts of the film show him to have, especially when in meetings with his War Cabinet. The portrayal of King George was excellent; the speech impediments we've seen in Colin Firth's portrayal in The King's Speech are still evident here which was lovely to see. Miss Layton acted as a wonderful sort of window into the streets of Britain, helping Churchill to make decisions based on what the people were wanting and experiencing. They added an extra texture both to the film and Churchill's character which I appreciated.
Another great layer to the story were the efforts of Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) and former Prime Minister Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) to force a vote of no confidence on Churchill by both resigning. Not only did this add to the struggle Churchill was facing in his first two or three weeks as Prime Minister but it also created some twists in the plot which I won't spoil despite the fact that I'm talking about history (so is it even possible to spoil?). In past recreations of this period Neville Chamberlain has been shown as frail and weak both physically and as a politician particularly due to his battle with cancer and his sort of subordination to Lord Halifax as they try to oust Churchill. In this portrayal Chamberlain takes the reigns and brings about him an air of respect and authority which was a very interesting dynamic.
I didn't appreciate as much, however, the focus of the film on Churchill's wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The acting in this role was great but I felt at times the film would cut away from a really tense moment to watch her putting some earrings in while sat at her vanity for five seconds. It felt a bit choppy so there probably just needed to be slightly longer scenes with her for the audience to fully appreciate how she felt left behind in the shadow of her husband's success and the importance of his job rather than her being a distraction from the storyline.
As I mentioned before, this film does involve a lot of talking and discussion. This means several monologues from Churchill's character. We hear his first speech in the House of Commons as Prime Minister, the speech he gives in the height of tensions during Operation Dynamo* and some incredible monologues in his bunker when meeting with his War Cabinet. We get some of Churchill's most famous quotes from these:
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
"You can not reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!"
"A man who doesn't change his mind doesn't change anything."
"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."
You can click here to listen to a recording of Churchill himself saying the speech from which that last quote originally comes. Bear in mind he recorded this years after the war at home; it was not recorded when he said it in the House of Commons so we do not know how exactly he said it.
*The film only features a very short clip of civilian boats making their way over to Dunkirk; most of the story to do with this operation are behind-the-scenes moments where Churchill and the Cabinet work out the logistics. Nonetheless, the ten seconds of boats we see of Operation Dynamo were easily better than Nolan's two-hour depiction. That should tell you how much I disliked Dunkirk.
One last thing I wanted to mention is the casting for particular members of Churchill's War Cabinet. As a History student of Churchill's career I've spent the last few months looking at a lot of pictures and videos of Churchill and his colleagues which meant I was extremely excited when I could identify who certain actors in the film were meant to be. One in particular that caught my eye was Clement Attlee, played by David Schofield. This wasn't a very prominent role in the film but it gave me a little kick when I could tell who he was supposed to be without it being pointed out.
I couldn't find any pictures of Schofield in character as Attlee but even out of character they look similar!
The History
As ever, there is a chance I could spoil some things in this section. However, as I said, it is history so it's worth learning about and it's kind of difficult not to spoil. Anyway, in this section of the post I will assess how true Darkest Hour was to the true story of Churchill's first couple of weeks as Prime Minister.
From the start the film made a point of showing just how desperate the situation was in Britain by May 1940. Britain was running out of gold reserves, seriously struggling against the Nazi forces with no help from America in sight. British troops were being pushed into the sea at Dunkirk and the British forces simply did not have the resources to rescue them. The French were very interested in entering peace deals with Germany through Italy as they were close to surrender. This was all true.
A very moving scene in the film shows Churchill sat in the lavatory having a conversation with US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt via a direct phone line. While this conversation was incredibly touching as it showed a desperate side to Churchill and, of course, the eager-to-help side to Roosevelt (my fave), it did not actually happen in May 1940. The direct line from London to Washington didn't exist until 1943. Also, when Churchill was initially appointed Prime Minister FDR had not been so keen on him.
Also very tense and moving in the film were the arguments Churchill had with member of his War Cabinet over whether or not to seek a peace agreement. Sources from inside the Cabinet suggest there were not shouting matches as shown in Darkest Hour, but rather slightly quieter voices from inside the room suggesting alternatives to the option Churchill wanted to take of continuing the fight, such as the voice of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Moreover, the film places a lot of weight on Churchill finally giving in to the idea of considering or seeking peace terms; however, sources imply that he was not as close to surrender as the film suggests. He was very aware that doing any more than Halifax had been discreetly doing to discover what German peace terms may have been would have weakened Britain's position and made clear that Britain felt as though she was soon to lose.
When Churchill feels strained and conflicted by the decision he has to make, in the film he goes to take the District Line to Westminster so that he can talk directly to the British people and find out what they wanted him to do. This is a lovely scene but Darkest Hour screenwriter Anthony McCarten has admitted that this probably never happened. In his book Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink, which is a commentary on the true events behind his film, he makes no mention of the events on the tube. However, it is perfectly possible that at some point, or even multiple times during the War, Churchill did a runner to go and check up on the mood of the nation. The District Line scene apparently comes from deep research though there is no obvious record that it actually happened as shown in the film. Furthermore, Churchill's grandson Sir Nicholas Soames claimed in an exclusive interview with Express that this scene was a "flight of fancy".
A quite charming aspect of the film and its portrayal of Churchill were the scenes in which we see him sweating over his speeches and re-writing them and editing them until he thought they were perfect. It's no secret he was a keen writer so it was nice to see this was brought forward in the film.
Some artistic license was used in the portrayal of Churchill's PA Elizabeth Layton. The real Miss Layton was raised in Canada which means she probably did not have the jolly-British accent Lily James uses in this film. What's more, she didn't even work for Churchill until a year after the events of the film.
The film shows a rocky start to the relationship between Churchill and King George VI which was indeed the case in reality. King George had struggled to look past Churchill's massive blunders from earlier on in his career including Gallipoli and Norway which made him apprehensive when Churchill became Prime Minister. He had also been a big supporter of Neville Chamberlain which contributed to his doubt about whether or not Churchill would be a suitable replacement.
On the topic of Churchill's gigantic mistakes, I was pleased the film was not afraid to show he was far from perfect and on many occasions lacked judgement. On two occasions it mentioned his mammoth errors though they were listed in quite quick succession so I fear anyone who doesn't know much about how horrible these decisions were might not have understood just why so many people feared he couldn't be trusted as a wartime PM. I would've liked slightly more emphasis on this.
As part of my History course we have spent some time reading some of Churchill's important speeches which show his perspective on the situation in India, the future of British Empire and so on. He had some incredible antiquated views on the Empire - and was really quite racist at times - which the film has left out. I accept that there simply wasn't the time or place within the storyline for him to have one of his "white people are simply better" outbursts, however, so I won't criticise Darkest Hour too much for this emission. They made up for it with a pleasantly accurate nod to how often he said the word "duty" (he said it an awful lot).
Generally, Darkest Hour was very true to the facts. With the exception of only a few details and the slightly more fantastical District Line scene, this film is an excellent reenactment of the incredible first few weeks of Churchill's premiership.
Bibliography
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/12/08/what_s_fact_and_what_s_fiction_in_darkest_hour.html
https://www.thewrap.com/darkest-hour-winston-churchill-sneak-off-london-underground-subway/
Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/903794/Darkest-Hour-Winston-Churchill-grandson-Sir-Nicholas-Soames-Gary-Oldman-Oscars
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