Posted on 01/07/2018 7:01:09 AM PST by Rummyfan
Churchill is an abidingly popular role with big-time actors once the receding hairline and expanding girth of middle-age set in. Sometimes the player is too evidently suited to the part - one thinks of Robert Hardy on telly in the Eighties - and the jowly gravitas gets clanked around as if Winnie wandered Chartwell and Westminster in never-was-so-much-owed mode 24/7. On the literal face of it, the man who brought both Sid Vicious and Commissioner Gordon to the silver screen is one of the least obvious cinematic Winstons ever, and he wears his lavish prosthetics with a very light touch. Gary Oldman's is stylistically both a nimbler and more shambolic Churchill - boozy and blustery and blubbery, immensely secure and oddly disconnected. It is a dazzling performance of the indispensable man of the century, intelligent and insightful, yet one that caused me, by the end, a grave unease.
Churchill tends to the Churchillian, which is to say the epic. Darkest Hour, by contrast, is very finely focused. Joe Wright, director, and Edward McCarten, writer, confine their two dark hours of screen time to a couple of critical weeks in May 1940, when Hitler's invasion of Norway precipitated Neville Chamberlain's retreat from Downing Street. Aside from some rather elaborately choreographed overhead shots and a lush grandiose score, Darkest Hour is filmed claustrophobically - in poky sitting rooms, Downing Street basements, attics, Westminster ante-rooms, and chilly lavatories; the lighting is crepuscular. The fate of the world is being determined, but we never glimpse the far horizons, only the dingy backrooms.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
wow great review. makes me want to go see it. loved the line at the end,
“Unlike Iron-Man 5 and Spider-Man 12 and Cardboard-Man 19 and Franchise-Man 37, this is the film of an actual, real-life superhero....”
so true.
You mean the black guy on the tube quoting Shakespeare wasn’t real-Bummer!
Obama was afraid to make decisions and take chances, so he restricted his commanders
Obama refused to make decisions and take chances, because the traitorous moslem bastard was giving material aid and comfort to the enemy.
If there were any justice, the putrid maggot would HANG !
I thought it was a great movie (although I agree with Styen about those scenes about the “common people” being the inspiration for Churchill - they were a pretty PC rendering of history, although ultimately they didn’t distract too much from the main subject of the film).
One thing that might have made this a particularly personal film for Oldman is that he himself was blackballed in Hollywood (just as Churchill was marginalized from polite, powerful company) for some five years because the rumor got out that he didn’t approve of some editing the left-wing Disney Studios had done on a film to make it somehow pro-Obama. Nobody could ever find a direct quote, to my knowledge, of his having said this, but all it took to ruin him was the hint of a suspicion that he might not be 100% with the program. He seems to be back on the circuit now, though. Great actor.
Dunkirk looks like it might get a few awards too.
Yikes!, she was ugly.
We have your back, Mr. President. Keep fighting the good fight.
“...Best scene was when Churchill jumped out of his car and road the underground for one stop. If that scene is true, those people were heroic and epic in their own time.”
According to several informed reviewers, including Mark Steyn himself in the column that is the subject of this thread, the “tube” scene was entirely invented.
Winston Churchill was not inspired by the common people of Britain. He inspired them. Mark Steyn’s column points this out.
And major segments of Britain’s political elite were more than ready to throw in the towel in the summer of 1940; Churchill had to overcome their fear, inertia, and sinking morale also.
The idea to use private crafts with civilians to save those cornered troops was brilliant. Because they comprised pretty much all of the British military forces at the time.
On the other hand, Darkest Hour is a movie about the leadership of Winston Churchill, where Dunkirk plays a role. Gary Oldman was a spot-on Churchill. He deserves a crack at the Best Actor award.
I could not for the life of me see Gary Oldman in this character. His portrayal for Winston Churchill is so credible, you think you were seeing the real man brought back alive. Very believable. Magnificent performance.
Both movies were excellent in their own right. I highly recommend each of them.
I see quite a few movies and there are not many good ones out there anymore.
These two movies rise above the normal Hollywood fare that is mostly targeted to young teenage boys.
There was a little poetic license in it.
I found the most difficult scenes were in his own home where he came across as feeble. Something tells me that wasn't the case in real life.
Winnie was half American and was proud of it.
Yes I believe that is the more accurate description.
“...the lighting is crepuscular”
Oh for more film reviews with this level of literacy!
Initially I’ll agree with you. However, he eventually got their support as well.
“As with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, one’s admiration for the film is tempered by a terrible profound sadness - for a people who “won the war, and lost their country anyway”: the “long island story” is ending, and without anyone feeling the need to lie choking on the ground over it. To anyone old enough to remember an England where one could “walk into any pub in the country and ask with perfect confidence if the major had been in”, that sense of loss can bring tears to the eye. Unlike Iron-Man 5 and Spider-Man 12 and Cardboard-Man 19 and Franchise-Man 37, this is the film of an actual, real-life superhero: You leave the theater with the cheers of the House ringing in your ears ...and return to a world where quoting Churchill in his own land can get you arrested.”
Mark is such a wonderful read.
I just read the companion book that the author of the screen play put out and it has some original scholarship from original sources on the tiny points of the history of this short period.
First, it shows pretty clearly that contrary to almost every other account, there was a day when Churchill was ready to accept a peace negotiation along the lines put forward by Halifax. Using various notes and minutes of all parties at the time, it seems that Churchill was not the single steel spine of the British Government as is often portrayed.
I have read about three or four thousand pages of Churchillian history and I have to say the writer does a very good job of centering on the distinction that while providing the verbal inspiration in his speeches for the iron willed British, he came to that over a three day period as events unfolded.
Likewise, the author, again with original sources show the inspiration and specific plan for the flotilla rescue at Dunkirk was principally Churchill’s — something he is rarely given enough credit for by those that are his detractors.
I will admit that this one had me laughing out loud.
This point actually does come across in the movie as well. At least I thought it did along with the companion who saw it with me. In fact, it was stated in conversation after the movie that he had not realized just how ‘hated Churchill’ really was at the time. That peace negotiation through Halifax and Mussolini, if Churchill would have not considered it, would have led to a vote of no confidence from his own party.
With so many against him, one has to wonder just exactly who influenced him into having the courage of making the decision he made. Was it the conversation he had with King George as depicted in the movie where he makes it clear Churchill has his complete support, was it his wife, or his secretary. As pointed out several times the underground railway scene is fiction, “But then there are scenes in the movie, like the Underground scene for instance, which is a fictionalization of an “emotional truth,” as you put it. Churchill was known to go AWOL at times, no one could find him. They didn’t know where he went. And he was also known to go and visit the people of London and seek their counsel, and have a little cry with them sometimes.”
Did That Pivotal Darkest Hour Scene Really Happen? Joe Wright Fills Us In
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1731500/did-that-pivotal-darkest-hour-scene-really-happen-joe-wright-fills-us-in
In an interview, the director said the movie is a rebuke of Trump.
A good movie but highly fictionalized in many respects.
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