☆☆☆☆
Just months after the technically remarkable but narratively inert Dunkirk comes a different side of the same story with director Joe Wright's Darkest Hour, which is both a rather shameless Oscar bid from Gary Oldman and an unexpectedly engrossing drama of resolute leadership.
Darkest Hour takes place over the course of one month in May and June 1940, days that shaped England and the world beginning with the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after a disastrous response to Hitler's invasion of Europe, and ending with the evacuation of 300,000 British soldiers at Dunkirk, an operation ordered by Chamberlain's successor, Winston Churchill.
Most of the time, Darkest Hour works best as a straightforward history lesson, providing the perspective, explanation and careful understanding of the Battle of Dunkirk that Dunkirk director Christopher Nolan assumed modern audiences already had. Dunkirk left me feeling both overwhelmed by its visual and aural assault on the senses and hopelessly lacking in historical education; it cared not at all if you understood what was happening or its importance.
Darkest Hour director Wright and screenwriter Anthony McCarten are less presumptuous, and if the end result is not as flat-out spectacular as Dunkirk and sometimes veers a little too close to a History Channel re-enactment (or at least a 1980s ABC mini-series), overall the film is better for the effort to explain both the desperate situation that Churchill faced and his own reasons for taking the approach he did.
Darkest Hour clearly lionizes Churchill, and its glorification of one of the century's most gifted orators and eloquent leaders seems designed to stand in stark contrast to the globe's current political leadership. Though it is about the decision to use military force and to fight against a seemingly insurmountable foe -- without, the film makes it clear, the support of almost any other military power, including the U.S. -- Darkest Hour is a war movie that is concerned almost exclusively with the battles waged inside the government.
It's a remarkably intimate look at the way military decisions are made, and offers a nuanced examination of how Churchill went from being a figure of some derision within both Parliament and Buckingham Palace to becoming one of history's icons.
Though Darkest Hour picks up a couple of years after Chamberlain's infamous "peace in our time" comment, the inability of what had once been the political and financial center of world to suppress Hitler is the conflict that sets the story in motion, and to Wright's enormous credit he uses a swirling camera and his bold stylistic trademark to draw us in right away. The opening moments may be a bunch of old white guys talking, but they seemed to me as absorbing as the first shots of Star Wars, insisting we figure out the situation on our own while making it clear who's on which side.
As for Churchill, Darkest Hour presents him as a man who has both longed for political leadership since "the nursery," as he puts it to his wife, and who is as overwhelmed and unprepared for the reality of a military invasion by the Nazis as anyone would be. Churchill is both scared and confident, and Oldman -- covered in makeup and mumbling and blustering his way through a detailed portrayal that teeters (but never falls) toward caricature -- finds this balance delightfully.
Just when it looks like Oldman might chew the scenery to bits, he finds a quiet center to Churchill, and Wright continually uses his frame and the nuanced camerawork of Bruno Delbonnel to show how alone the man may have felt with the weight of the world on his shoulders. There are some gorgeous moments in the film that emphasize how unlike modern leaders Churchill was, surrounded not by an entourage but by his own thoughts.
There's one dramatic (and almost certainly fictionalized) scene in which Churchill escapes his chauffeur-driven car to journey into the London Underground, daring to ride the Tube and speak directly to his people. It's a terrific scene that leads directly into Churchill's decision to rebuke his own War Cabinet, and it's the film's high point.
Far less successful are scenes between Churchill and his wife, played well by Kristin Scott Thomas, whose formidable talents can't quite hide that there's nothing to the role. She's merely a supportive wife, and the same goes for the very good but tremendously underutilized Lily James as Churchill's secretary. Darkest Hour labors to dimensionalize Churchill through private moments with these women, but it doesn't need to try so hard. Its failure to deliver on the intimate moments don't detract from the rest of the film as much as feel like they're missed opportunities to keep us in the tension Churchill faces with his senior advisers and with King George VI, who's nicely underplayed by Ben Mendelsohn.
Darkest Hour rarely ventures outside of Churchill's London, and relishes staying underground in the Cabinet War Rooms, with just a few sweeping shots of the war in action. That puts it in stark contrast to Dunkirk, and it's hard not to imagine what kind of definitive British war drama could be made by taking the best of each and combining them into one epic.
But if you have time for only one, I'd strongly recommend Darkest Hour over Dunkirk, but put together, they make for quite a pair.
Viewed December 23, 2017 -- Pacific Sherman Oaks 5
1645
Darkest Hour takes place over the course of one month in May and June 1940, days that shaped England and the world beginning with the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after a disastrous response to Hitler's invasion of Europe, and ending with the evacuation of 300,000 British soldiers at Dunkirk, an operation ordered by Chamberlain's successor, Winston Churchill.
Most of the time, Darkest Hour works best as a straightforward history lesson, providing the perspective, explanation and careful understanding of the Battle of Dunkirk that Dunkirk director Christopher Nolan assumed modern audiences already had. Dunkirk left me feeling both overwhelmed by its visual and aural assault on the senses and hopelessly lacking in historical education; it cared not at all if you understood what was happening or its importance.
Darkest Hour director Wright and screenwriter Anthony McCarten are less presumptuous, and if the end result is not as flat-out spectacular as Dunkirk and sometimes veers a little too close to a History Channel re-enactment (or at least a 1980s ABC mini-series), overall the film is better for the effort to explain both the desperate situation that Churchill faced and his own reasons for taking the approach he did.
Darkest Hour clearly lionizes Churchill, and its glorification of one of the century's most gifted orators and eloquent leaders seems designed to stand in stark contrast to the globe's current political leadership. Though it is about the decision to use military force and to fight against a seemingly insurmountable foe -- without, the film makes it clear, the support of almost any other military power, including the U.S. -- Darkest Hour is a war movie that is concerned almost exclusively with the battles waged inside the government.
It's a remarkably intimate look at the way military decisions are made, and offers a nuanced examination of how Churchill went from being a figure of some derision within both Parliament and Buckingham Palace to becoming one of history's icons.
Though Darkest Hour picks up a couple of years after Chamberlain's infamous "peace in our time" comment, the inability of what had once been the political and financial center of world to suppress Hitler is the conflict that sets the story in motion, and to Wright's enormous credit he uses a swirling camera and his bold stylistic trademark to draw us in right away. The opening moments may be a bunch of old white guys talking, but they seemed to me as absorbing as the first shots of Star Wars, insisting we figure out the situation on our own while making it clear who's on which side.
As for Churchill, Darkest Hour presents him as a man who has both longed for political leadership since "the nursery," as he puts it to his wife, and who is as overwhelmed and unprepared for the reality of a military invasion by the Nazis as anyone would be. Churchill is both scared and confident, and Oldman -- covered in makeup and mumbling and blustering his way through a detailed portrayal that teeters (but never falls) toward caricature -- finds this balance delightfully.
Just when it looks like Oldman might chew the scenery to bits, he finds a quiet center to Churchill, and Wright continually uses his frame and the nuanced camerawork of Bruno Delbonnel to show how alone the man may have felt with the weight of the world on his shoulders. There are some gorgeous moments in the film that emphasize how unlike modern leaders Churchill was, surrounded not by an entourage but by his own thoughts.
There's one dramatic (and almost certainly fictionalized) scene in which Churchill escapes his chauffeur-driven car to journey into the London Underground, daring to ride the Tube and speak directly to his people. It's a terrific scene that leads directly into Churchill's decision to rebuke his own War Cabinet, and it's the film's high point.
Far less successful are scenes between Churchill and his wife, played well by Kristin Scott Thomas, whose formidable talents can't quite hide that there's nothing to the role. She's merely a supportive wife, and the same goes for the very good but tremendously underutilized Lily James as Churchill's secretary. Darkest Hour labors to dimensionalize Churchill through private moments with these women, but it doesn't need to try so hard. Its failure to deliver on the intimate moments don't detract from the rest of the film as much as feel like they're missed opportunities to keep us in the tension Churchill faces with his senior advisers and with King George VI, who's nicely underplayed by Ben Mendelsohn.
Darkest Hour rarely ventures outside of Churchill's London, and relishes staying underground in the Cabinet War Rooms, with just a few sweeping shots of the war in action. That puts it in stark contrast to Dunkirk, and it's hard not to imagine what kind of definitive British war drama could be made by taking the best of each and combining them into one epic.
But if you have time for only one, I'd strongly recommend Darkest Hour over Dunkirk, but put together, they make for quite a pair.
Viewed December 23, 2017 -- Pacific Sherman Oaks 5
1645
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