Tour de force
Gary Oldman gives triumphant performance as Churchill in ‘Darkest Hour’
If it takes a larger-than-life actor to portray a larger-than-life historical figure, Gary Oldman and Winston Churchill are a match made in casting heaven.
Director Joe Wright introduces us to him and his “Darkest Hour” as he’s waking up, barking orders from bed and terrorizing his timid new stenographer (Lily James). Enter devoted wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) to defuse the situation, gently reproving him with: “I’ve noticed a recent deterioration of your manners.”
He’ll be having booze for breakfast. Also for lunch and dinner. He has reason to be irascible. It is May 9, 1940. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium have already been overrun. France is next.
With England ruinously unready to face the Nazi juggernaut, Parliament votes noconfidence in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Hawkish Churchill desperately wants the job — has been, in fact, preparing for it his whole life. But he is not deeply beloved, in or out of the Conservative Party.
It’s not just his prickly personality and aristocratic hauteur (”I’ve never ridden a bus or queued for a theater ticket”). It’s the lingering disgrace from World War I when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was coresponsible for the disastrous Allied defeat at Gallipoli — nearly 500,000 British, Australian, French and Turkish casualties.
Nor is Churchill a favorite of the monarchy. King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) has never forgiven him for supporting brother Edward VIII’s divisive marriage to Wallis Simpson. One of the film’s best scenes is the duel-like first meeting of king and new prime minster: It goes badly. After the obligatory ceremonial ring kiss, George discreetly wipes his hand on his back.
Now, with the imminent Nazi invasion of England itself, Churchill faces his own and his country’s single most fateful decision: to negotiate peace with Germany or stand firm and mobilize for a fight to the death — despite a doubtful public, a skeptical king, a coalition war cabinet full of rivals, and plots within his own party to oust him.
Virtuoso director Wright — “Pride & Prejudice” (2005), “Atonement” (2007), “Anna Karenina” (2012) — lets only a few glimpses and compelling montages of battle interrupt the dramatic soul-searching and speech-making of the affair — Churchill’s buck-up radio addresses (”There’s time enough for the truth later,” he says,
privately) and the predictable highlight: his immortal House of Commons speech, offering nothing but “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
He’ll be flashing that “V” for victory sign, even in retreat or in the war cabinet’s underground bunker — not unlike Hitler’s — where someone observes, “He has 100 ideas a day — four of them good, the rest delusional.”
But he has at least one truly great idea, when Calais falls and France is lost: to evacuate, rather than surrender, the 340,000 British and French-Belgian troops with a ragtag civilian armada of small boats, against all odds and under ferocious Luftwaffe bombardment.
On the eve of which, the film ends.
Ms. Thomas is excellent as Winnie’s better half, the tougher of the two, even (or especially) in her curlers. Ms. James helps humanize the Great Man. Stephen Dillane and Ronald Pickup as scheming Halifax and clinging Chamberlain do well. Best in support is Mr. Mendelsohn, who keeps his stuttering to a minimum, thus finessing comparisons to Colin Firth’s stellar performance as George VI in “The King’s Speech.”
But it’s Mr. Oldman’s show from start to finish. One of our greatest extant actors, he outdoes his Sid Vicious, Beethoven and Joe Orton impersonations combined in this biopic rendering. His transformation involved smoking some 400 of Churchill’s beloved Romeo y Julieta Cubans (at $50 apiece, a $20,000 cigar budget), from which he got nicotine poisoning during production. The prosthetics, body suit and makeup took four hours to get into daily.
Impressive stats aside, the characterization — good as it is — seems a bit too boozy and dotty from the get-go — the delivery a bit too halting and mumbly. Some of his pauses are longer than the evening news. At other times, he bites off more scenery than we (not he) can chew. But that’s Gary Oldman. He’ll never bore you.
Did Winston Churchill really go into the metro and talk to the folks?
I don’t know, but I know “The Darkest Hour” and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” would make a terrific — if grueling — double feature. The latter picks up precisely where the former leaves off.
One thing we know for sure, in his dark hour, is the power of Churchill’s words. As Viscount Halifax put it: “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”