DARKEST HOUR

An award-winning 2017 film recreating one of the most significant moments in our country’s history is proving a huge hit at the box office

The story of the tense days of May 1940, in which Churchill assumed the Premiership of our country — while the nations of Europe, one after one, fell under the control of Berlin — is told in a 2017 film, starring the superb Gary Oldman, recent winner of the Oscar for Best Actor, as “the grand old man” and directed by Joe Wright, a film-maker with an eye for period authenticity.

With cigar (and brandy and champagne) ever at his fingertips, Churchill wrestled with doubt and his own demons, whilst the British establishment led by Lord Halifax called for peace terms with Hitler. Partly wishing to avoid a repeat of the carnage of 1914-18, but also (it has to be said) motivated by the ingrained Whitehall/foreign Office mentality of “coming to terms”, the film shows Halifax and his supporters trying every trick in the book to isolate Churchill — to make him abandon his “romantic” delusions (of a fighting, sovereign Britain) and to see reason. They nearly succeed: as it seems impossible to conceive of the defeated British Army at Dunkirk ever escaping, and thus being able to defend the British mainland from an invasion.

As in all good films, a few liberties are taken with truth — and we see Gary Oldman’s Churchill escape from his chauffeur-driven car and descend into the London Underground network, meeting surprised Londoners — all of whom tell Churchill that they want to fight on and will never surrender. Buoyed up by the natural patriotism of the ordinary people, Churchill returns to Westminster to tell the parliamentarians of his Tube-train epiphany. Growling that after an invasion Halifax and his friends will be spared the sight of the swastika from the comfort of their country estates, he vows to tear up any “tentative” proposals for peace with the conquerors of Europe.

Meanwhile, Chamberlain (played by Ronald Pickup) — who, in 1938 at Munich, tried to give us “peace in our time” — at last sees that Churchill is right: that you can’t negotiate with your head in the jaws of the tiger! Chamberlain, once a friend of Halifax, signals to the MPS to support Churchill. It is the only thing to do with panzers poised across the Channel.

With a breathtaking computer-generated scene of the flotilla of little ships sailing past the White Cliffs of Dover on their way to Dunkirk, Darkest Hour creates a sense of Britain on the brink. And this atmosphere is powerfully intensified by a moving scene in which King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn), on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at night, wonders if these are the very last days and hours of his realm.

History shows us that we are at our best, not in “negotiations” and behind-the-scenes shilly-shallying, but when we find our voice and act with resolution. Only then, as in 1940, can we overcome those darkest hours…