Another side of Churchill in “Darkest Hour” – Film Review

Never SurrenderOftentimes we hear of the larger than life figures of history through a fairly narrow window. Their stirring quotes and courage summed to make decisions, all the while carrying the weight of a country on their shoulders. Certainly if you read in depth biographies you get to see various sides, but the number of people who take the time to do that is quite small.

Whether intended or not and I have no idea if it was, Darkest Hour could be looked at as a comment on the political situation we find ourselves in across the globe. This film is about courage and leadership for an entire country. Not just a popular idea, or a subset of the population.

In Darkest Hour, director Joe Wright (Atonement) and writer Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything), significantly shorten the story horizon while putting their Churchill on the defensive in Parliament as well as himself. It takes place in a span of less than a month; from the time he becomes Prime Minister due to Neville Chamberlain’s (Ronald Pickup) ousting, through the exiting of the British solders stranded on the Dunkirk Beach.

They give us a seasoned politician who has been through the ringer, drinks constantly and smokes like a chimney. During the crisis moments he is hesitant, demanding and absolutely certain that he has figured out how to deal with Hitler. Despite knowing the outcome, the filmmakers manage to build suspense through great pacing and the urgency of saving 300,000 troops.

Gary Oldman is splendid in his portrayal which is given a huge push with a near perfect prosthetic body suit and superb facial make-up by Kazuhiro Tsuji. I have always admired Mr. Oldman’s skills which have been carefully honed over years and dozens of films. There’s the action Oldman; Romeo is Bleeding and Air Force One. He looks different from movie to movie, paying special attention to the physicality of who he is playing. His performance as Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK and Shelly Runyon in The Contender are two of my favorites. I can’t see anyone else ever playing Oswald again. His Runyon character was a warm-up to Churchill; cigar included.

Near the end Churchill must address Parliament to lay out his next steps and overall vision. He observes ordinary Londoners walking the street and entering the Underground. When his limousine stops he gets out and walks onto the Tube. He has warm exchanges with the working class going about their day. I don’t care if this actually took place, but this film made me want to believe it had. This grounds Churchill who had never been on a bus or a subway before. It also validates his thinking.

The film is shot almost entirely in a fog; either from all the smoking or the filmmakers foreshadowing the coming fog of war. Britain was unprepared for the German Blitzkrieg and no one was really sure Churchill was up to the task; him included. Once installed as Prime Minister by King George IV (Ben Mendelsohn) in a most informal manner, things get into high gear very quickly.

Early on we meet his new aide. A young woman who is thrown into the lion’s den of Churchill’s constant drinking and smoking and oh yes; his lack of manner. Elizabeth Layton apparently drew the short straw and despite a shaky start, gives it the still upper lip, much to Churchill’s advantage. Lily James (Baby Driver) plays the part with a straight spine and regal neck. She’s also a perfect typist. When Churchill does let his human slip show, it’s done more often with Layton than anyone else besides his wife Clemmie (Kristin Scott Thomas). Ms. Thomas shows up just at the right time to both support and advise her husband as well as provides some needed comic relief.

Churchill and Clemmie.jpg
Kristin Scott Thomas Churchill’s wife, Clemmie

Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane) a prominent conservative and personal friend of the King was Foreign Secretary at the time and wanted to negotiate a peace deal with Germany. He viewed Churchill as a war hawk with no room in his head for dealmaking. As if there wasn’t enough friction in Churchill’s life, this one had the potential to derail many things. Mr. Dillane has one of the best lines in the film. After listening to Churchill’s first speech as PM he turns to Chamberlain and says, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” It had a double meaning. Indeed Britain would surely go to war and it sent a clear message to Hitler that the storied history of the kingdom would not lie down as Europe had done.

Much of the film was shot in the Churchill War Rooms, nicely recreated for the film. I went back and looked at the photos I took in those rooms on my last visit to London, and was impressed at how faithfully and how much attention to detail the set designers took. Small historical inaccuracy. Churchill didn’t use the War Rooms until late in 1940 because there were no air raids yet.

When the story ventured outside London we mostly see only overhead shots from the vantage point of Luftwaffe bombers pounding Europe below. There are also no live shots of German soldiers and Hitler is only seen once, on the cover of a newspaper and heard once in the War Rooms. Even the opening credits show the Nazi war machine in black and white stills. They hadn’t yet crossed the Channel and Britain was still untouched.

The only Golden Globe nomination for Darkest Hour went to Gary Oldman for Best Actor in a Drama. Mr. Oldman is the film and his performance is worthy of serious recognition. If Dunkirk hadn’t come out in 2017, this film might have faired better with audiences as well as in the upcoming awards season. If you want to see a veteran actor perform his craft beautifully and are keen on WWII history, you will have an enjoyable experience.

Soundtrack by Dario Marianelli and Vikingur Ólafsson

125 minutes

Images courtesy of Focus Features

 

 

Decoding The Imitation Game: It Wasn’t Hard

The Movie The Imitation Game Delivers and Disappoints

THE IMITATION GAMEI was drawn to this film because of my keen interest in history and technology. During WWII Germany created The Enigma machine that coded and then uncoded messages to their military machine around the world via radio signals. The communications carried intelligence and war strategy directions, and ultimately strike orders. This code was instrumental in giving Hitler a vast head start in his desire to overtake as much of the world as possible, and it was working.

Knowing that breaking the code was critical to winning the war, the British assembled a small group of cryptographers and mathematicians, tasking them to break the Enigma code in a small facility south of London. Among them was Professor Alan Turing, a brilliant but strange mathematician and puzzle prodigy.

The Imitation Game was directed by Morten Tyldum and based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges first published in 1983. The film does indeed tell the code-braking story, but it’s through the lens of Alan Turing who was the mastermind behind the effort and architect of the machine that did so. The choice to make Turning the central story element meant the filmmakers had to veer away from the military drama and focus their storytelling on the arc of Turing’s life.

Turing is played with fine control by Benedict Cumberbatch. He delivers on the challenging task of displaying clumsy genius. He is clear in his objectives, but those goals do not compute in any society. I think he has an outside chance of being nominated for an Academy Award.

In between the fascinating bits about how the project at Bletchley Park, camouflaged as a radio factory, we learn far too much about Turing’s painful and tortured life. He was clearly “on the spectrum.” In other words not a neurotypical (NT). He could not understand how people did not speak the words they meant, instead relying heavily on subtle body language and a secret code that sent the real messages.

This plagued Turing his entire life. That coupled with his homosexuality in a culture where it was illegal, he never had a chance to find a comfortable place in society.

The film’s characters are as expected. Turing’s team at Bletchley, the crusty Commander Denniston (Charles enigma-machineDance) and Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) the head of Britain’s spy organization MI1, all fulfill their duty that leads to the success of the decoding project.

Keira Knightly plays Joan Clarke, a female with a math brain who answered a newspaper ad designed to attract puzzle solvers. Once she gets past the usual hurdles, Clarke becomes Turing’s muse (term used loosely) and contributes in meaningful ways to the project. It’s not a challenging role for Ms. Knightly, but without her, this film would be even harder to watch.

The best part of this picture is the crisp pacing of the film, which I believe is largely due to the great work by William Goldenberg (editor extraordinaire). He weaves three distinct phases of Turing’s life into a seamless montage that makes this a true biopic. The director, Mr. Tyldum, has worked extensively in television and that severely handicaps him here. There is repetitive use of static shots throughout and an uninspired camera. The result is disappointing. A huge story filmed in small format.

I can appreciate wanting to be true to the times and not overuse CGI, but in my opinion, this was an opportunity missed. This could and should be two films. One about the breaking of the code, and the other about Alan Turing.

The soundtrack was composed by Alexandre Desplat, who seems to write all film scores these days. It’s his usual outing, but this time he levels his tracks, which is diametrically opposed to Turing’s personality. No matter, I believe Mr. Desplat is a genius in supporting images with music. He regularly composes twice the number of pieces per film as almost anyone else in the business, except for perhaps Hans Zimmer.

A couple more comments. How can anyone make Keira Knightly look ordinary? And. Those Brits can really keep a secret.

The film’s official web site is, like most movie digital homes, a total mess. You learn nothing new about the movie or Turing, and are subjected to navigation that requires an Enigma Machine to decode.

The-Imitation-Game-Poster-3

Images from the film by Black Bear Pictures and Bristol Automotive

Enigma machine image found on Google images. Thank you interwebs