The Darkest Hour

Excellent film at Maplewood.

Agree.  Gary Oldman's performance is a must-see.

A friend asked:  How did they get Churchill to play Churchill?

Happy New Year,

Ron

It mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

I found it weirdly claustrophobic and short of the Lithgow standard. Was Churchill really such a bumbler?

Pretty, imaginative cinematograpy, though, and Kristen Scott Thomas is awesome as Clemmie. 

I saw an interview with Oldman about the movie. It took about 4 hours for him to get into makeup and clothing for the role.

3.5 of 5 stars. There was some utter nonsense that took off at least a half star.

They missed Leo Amery screaming “Speak for England!” to Arthur Greenwood. And they showed Greenwood lighting up Chamberlain in the opening scene!! If they had only rolled back a few seconds! Moments before that scene starts, Chamberlain had sat after giving a speech previcating on defending Poland. 

Greenwood was not Labor’s leader but was the ranking member present. He got up and announced he was “speaking for labor”.

Amery, a hardcore anti-appeasement Conservative, shouted out “Speak for England!” or, in some tellings, “Speak for England, Arthur!” A remarkable moment given that the prime minister and conservative party leader had just sat down- the obviously implication was- that man did NOT speak for England. Conservatives and Labor both cheered Amery- that moment was the culmination of the end of Chamberlain’s leading the National Government. So close to one of the highest drama moments in the history of parliament and ignored!!! A shame.

Roosevelt was shown in his one “scene” as breezily indifferent to Churchill’s entreaties. Nonsense. Before and early in America’s involvement, he was laser focused on doing something, anything, legal or grey area legal to help. I’m no Roosevelt fan on other issues, but you cannot question his wish to extirpate the Nazis.

Churchill as many probably guessed did NOT ride the underground and get the inspiration for the “beaches” speech as a consequence. Moving scene. Pure Hollywood, not Westminster.

Churchill would not likely have spoken of the ability of the nobility to make some way of living under Nazi suzerainty so scornfully. He would have said it about ANY class. Churchill was aristocratic by birth and to the bone. He loved the English people but I don’t see him as much of a populist. 

And I think the biggest sin- Chamberlain and Halifax are depicted as some sort of appeasing opportunists. Yes, they did push for at least a discussion of peace. But for everyone that scorns them- they lived through the butchery of 25 years prior. They knew the dead and the horribly maimed, the widows and orphans, the invalids. The whole war cabinet did (Churchill too). Would all the tough talking Chamberlain basher do the same if they had the same experience, and without benefit of hindsight? The English COULD have sat out the war- as they could have the prior war. That they didn’t shocked the Kaiser and Hitler each time. Why fight Germany to the defense of, ultimately, Britain’s biggest historical rival? Plus, there was an understanding that the Pact of Steel had a timer on it and that eventually the two most disgusting political movements in European history would turn on each other, to their mutual ruination. 

This was before the death camps were known, but much was known of the vile Nazi regime. But everyone saw what WW1 bought- a few quiet nervous decades. And they saw what the cost was. Churchill was right- he was right from the beginning- but how can people say those looking at appeasement did so out of some craven character flaw, or, as the film suggests, out of political expediency? 

Totally worth a watch. But I hope folks unfamiliar with the events bring a skeptical mind.

(drift)

Churchill speaking on Chamberlain, 1940 (excerpt from speech in Parliament on Chamberlain's death):  "Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged."

https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/neville-chamberlain/

(end drift)