For this year's traditional Christmas Day movie, my wife and I chose Darkest Hour. The film begins in May 1940, when Winston Churchill became Britain's prime minister -- replacing Neville Chamberlain -- and continues through the evacuation at Dunkirk at the end of the month (completed in early June). Most of the reviews have focused on Gary Oldman's performance as Churchill, which was truly outstanding and well deserving of the plaudits. Oldman creates -- or as the reviewers often say, he inhabits -- the character naturally and convincingly. In historical memory, Churchill is a man of unwavering strength and conviction, but Oldman also reveals Churchill's doubts along the way. He also shows Churchill's problem drinking, without allowing it to turn into a caricature.
Even more impressive to me, however, was the direction by Joe Wright and the script by Anthony McCarten. There is always a problem in historical films, because everyone already knows the ending. NOTE: some might think that the following paragraph includes spoilers, although they are all well-known historical facts. I have nonetheless indented it, to make skipping easier:
We know that Churchill will become prime minister, despite the doubts of King George VI, we know that Churchill will reverse Chamberlain's policies, we know that the Germans will overrun Belgium and France, we know that Churchill will refuse Mussolini's offer to mediate a peace treaty with Hitler, we know that George VI will come over to Churchill's side, and we know that the British troops will be successfully evacuated at Dunkirk.
To paraphrase Alfred Hitchcock, suspense is when you know what is going to happen. But of course, it takes much more than common knowledge for the director and writer to make each succeeding event seems suspenseful and dramatic, when almost everyone in the audience already knows how things will turn out.
A two hour film necessarily skips over some history, but it would have been interesting to know why the opposition Labor Party insisted that Churchill was the only Conservative acceptable as a replacement for Chamberlain.
It was no surprise that the film ended with Churchill's famous speech to Parliament, rejecting the idea of a negotiated peace:
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.
Given the title of the film, many viewers will also expect to hear him say, "If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour." That line, however, came in another, equally important, speech, delivered a few weeks later. The film admirably sticks to the historical facts.
In sum, Darkest Hour is a terrific film in every dimension: acting, writing, and direction. It is also reassuring to see that a great leader can speak movingly to all of his nation's people, without mocking his adversaries or appealing only to a narrow base. Just as important as Churchill's speech and character is the quote that provides the post script to the film: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."
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