Intimate portrait

MOVIE: Darkest Hour STARRING: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James

RATING: PG

REVIWER: Vicky Roach 3.5/5

WINSTON Churchill is a hard man to pin down – as a glut of recent screen appearances attest.

In Joe Wright’s Darkest

Hour, Gary Oldman – unrecognisable behind a face full of jowly prosthetics that utterly transform him – offers a more vulnerable, somehow human-scale interpretation of the great leader.

While each of the aforementioned Churchills is extraordinarily powerful in their own way, Oldman’s up-close-and-personal version is the one that sticks, as is recognised in his recent Golden Globe win and surely an upcoming Oscar nod.

Darkest Hour is set during the crucial first days of Churchill’s first term as Prime Minister. France and Belgium are on the brink of surrendering to Hitler. British politicians have lost their nerve, partly due to the mistakes of WWI.

Churchill is portrayed as pretty much a lone voice in his determination to refuse an armistice with Germany. Only King George VI (a refined Ben Mendelsohn) backs him.

The great orator’s famous speech feels unnervingly hawkish in the current political environment, with Trump in the White House and Kim Jong-un firing off ballistic missiles whenever it pleases him.

But it had its intended effect at the time: convincing parliament to stay the course. And of course, history proved Churchill right.