NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP
Obviously, Winston didn’t imagine having to sit through Churchill, the movie
Sir Winston Churchill is hot. Last year, viewers of the Netflix series The Crown saw him portrayed by John Lithgow, the depth and deftness of his character such that one can only hope for a spinoff covering the great man’s entire life.
In November, Gary Oldman will pick up the cigar in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour, about Churchill’s first days as prime minister in 1940, at the start of the Second World War.
Into the breach steps the simply named Churchill, which takes place in the last few days before the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944.
The storming of Europe by sea was a kind of anti-Dunkirk, the withdrawal of Allied soldiers from France four years earlier that is soon to be a major motion picture from Christopher Nolan.
“We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory,” Churchill said at the time.
“Wars are not won by evacuations.”
But we’re getting behind ourselves. Churchill helped plan and execute Operation Overlord, as D-Day was known at the time, and he had great hopes for its success.
But you wouldn’t know that from Alex von Tunzelmann’s insipid screenplay, which takes every opportunity to portray the British leader as a doddering fool with his head stuck in the last Great War.
The film shows Churchill (Brian Cox, nailing the man’s pronunciation of “Nazzees”) as woefully unaware of the nuts and bolts of D-Day. Field Marshal Montgomery (Julian Wadham) has to patiently explain the various beaches on which the troops will be landing.
This also serves to educate viewers, albeit heavy-handedly: It’s the mark of a lazy screenwriter to have two characters start a conversation with the words: “Now, as we both already know ...”
The grumpy bulldog is admonished by king and country — the king being George VI (James Purefoy) and the country represented by Mrs. Churchill (Miranda Richardson) and by Churchill’s right-hand man Jan Smuts (Richard Durden).
Even his new secretary (Ella Purnell) gets to shout “That’s enough!” when her boss is in the midst of putting down the invasion’s chances of success. (Another scene shows him praying at bedtime for weather bad enough to scuttle the plan.)
Thus does director Jonathan Teplitzky steer this story from one of proper, historically accurate prime ministerial resolve into a sort of How Winston Got His Groove Back.
Churchill gets in a shouting match with U.S. General Eisenhower (John Slattery) over his desire to land on the beaches with the troops.
(There is truth to this request, though it’s doubtful it ended with the Allied commander telling the leader of another country: “You, sir, must be stopped!”)
After spending most of the movie acting like a petulant child, Churchill is eventually brought ’round by his wife, who tells him on the eve of the invasion, “Whatever happens tonight you must give them hope.”
And by his secretary, to whom he delivers news of her fiancé’s efforts at the front. In a rare moment of period-appropriate restraint, the movie does not have her give him a hug in return.
I shall leave the last words of this critique to Churchill himself, who said in a 1934 speech: “It is always an error in diplomacy to press a matter when it is quite clear that no further progress is to be made.”
As a movie, Churchill isn’t getting any better. Best to let the matter rest.
CHURCHILL ★ out of 5 Cast: Brian Cox, Richard Durden, John Slattery, Miranda Richardson Director: Jonathan Teplitzky Duration: 1 h 38 min