Rewards of being man of the hour

WHILE leading man Gary Oldman is hogging all the awards glory for his turn as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, the film’s director Joe Wright is happy to settle for a simpler reward: the knowledge that people are enjoying it.

Reports from cinemas in the UK and US have punters giving spontaneous standing ovations when Oldman delivers Churchill’s famous “fight on the beaches” speech.

“Well, it’s certainly nicer than having a flop, that’s for sure,” says Wright, 45.

After Wright’s previous feature, 2015’s Pan — which starred Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard — was lambasted and limped to a worldwide gross rather less than its US$150 million budget, the director of Pride and Prejudice and Atonement went back to his DVD collection.

Feeling “a little knocked around” and unsure “how to proceed”, Wright re-watched the movies that made him want to be a filmmaker in the first place and saw they mostly had one thing in common: they were dramas.

“I realised that was my first love and that’s what I had to do,” he says.

Darkest Hour — the story of Winston Churchill’s uncertain early days as prime minister of a Britain under threat of Nazi invasion — was the right drama at the right time.

Wright chose Oldman to play Churchill for the intensity he would bring to the role. The actor is so well hidden under makeup, even Wright says “I forget it’s him”.

If Oldman does win the Oscar for Best Actor — which he is favoured to do — Wright has no doubt he has earnt it. “Not only for this movie, but for an entire body of work. He’s the greatest actor of his generation, as far as I’m concerned.”

Building a team around Oldman wasn’t easy. Kristin Scott Thomas at first declined the “thankless wife role” of Clementine Churchill. But Wright changed her mind by working to make the role “as vital as possible”.

“Clementine didn’t stand behind Winston, she stood beside him,” he elaborates. “There would be no Winston Churchill if not for her.”

As for Churchill’s most important ally, King George VI, Wright didn’t believe a Brit would be right for the role, because Brits usually fall into two camps: reverential of royalty “or the opposite”.

“I needed someone who was just going to approach him as a human being.”

That someone was Ben Mendelsohn. Wright says watching the Australian “joust” with Oldman was “a real privilege”. “They’re quite different types of people, but they both approached each other with an enormous amount of respect. An actor is generally only as good as the person they’re playing opposite and I do think they upped each other’s game.”