'Darkest Hour' review: So we're gonna have two Dunkirk movies at the Oscars
Yeah, Gary Oldman's going to the Oscars this year. More importantly, he deserves to go to the Oscars this year. His performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour is that good.
Directed by Joe Wright (Atonement) and written by Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything), Darkest Hour chronicles the early days of Churchill's prime ministership – from his initial appointment and up through much of the Battle of France. (Operation Dynamo, recently dramatized in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, is a plot point in Darkest Hour.)
Oldman certainly looks the part of Churchill, having buried himself in heavy prosthetics and carefully studied mannerisms. (Shoutout to Darkest Hour's makeup department, seriously. It's shocking how natural it looks.) But Oldman knows the difference between packaging and performance – what really transforms him into Churchill is good old-fashioned acting. There's a living, breathing soul at underneath all that makeup, at the center of all those tics, and Oldman makes him fascinating to watch.
Oldman's isn't the only noteworthy performance, though. Like most biopics about brilliant assholes, Darkest Hour has a "neglected wife" character – but because this one's written as a more clear-eyed variation on that type, and because she's played with grit and grace by Kristin Scott Thomas, Clementine Churchill makes a strong impression. And Wright gives Ben Mendelsohn the chance to prove he can do more than play scumbags, casting him totally against type as King George VI.
Darkest Hour threatens, at times, to slip into staid boardroom drama mode – it's a lot of important men talking importantly about important issues – but Wright brings enough of a visual flourish to keep things interesting. Maybe even more helpful is that the film has a strong sense of humor, which goes a long way toward humanizing its characters.
Not all of its tricks work all of the time. The film's biggest misstep is a cutesy (and, as far as I can tell, entirely fabricated) sequence in which Churchill takes the subway so he can talk to the general public. The "people" are presented as an undifferentiated, feisty lot, eager to fight off the fascists with broom handles if they must; I challenge you to find a subway car anywhere in the world with that many people in such strong agreement about a contentious issue.
The "people" are far better represented through the character of Miss Layton (Lily James), Churchill's secretary. Without getting too sentimental about it, Darkest Hour uses Layton as a quiet but firm reminder of how Churchill's decisions affect ordinary people.
At the core of Darkest Hour is the question of what the United Kingdom should do about the Nazi regime overtaking the continent. World War II is still in its early days, and the U.K. populace remains mostly unaffected. "Hardly seems like there’s a war on at all," Churchill's driver remarks, looking at the citizens cheerfully going about their everyday business. (In one painful scene, Darkest Hour also remembers where the U.S. was at this point in time – asked for help, then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt offers, essentially, thoughts and prayers.)
We, in 2017, already know how this turns out. The U.K. commits to a full-fledged war against Germany, and after years of devastation, the Allies eventually prevail over the Axis powers. But Darkest Hour avoids the temptation to serve up cheap inspiration, and instead explores the point in time when that choice didn't look so obvious.
Whereas Churchill is willing to fight to the bloody end, Halifax (Game of Thrones' Stephen Dillane) is just as passionately pleading for peace. Why risk total annihilation against the German army when Italy's willing to negotiate an accord between the two countries? Isn't it better for the people to give a little than risk losing it all?
Halifax's arguments sound perfectly reasonable on their face: you've gotta hear both sides, you've gotta compromise, you've gotta give the other guy the benefit of the doubt that he'll come around eventually. They paint tempting visions of a world in which the U.K. is able to avoid World War II altogether, and its citizens are allowed to go on comfortably living their lives, untouched by the horrors of war.
But Churchill knows better – and so, the film implies, should we. "When will the lesson be learned?" he demands of Halifax. When has Hitler ever shown a willingness to restrain himself? What kind of people stand by and does nothing while a great existential threat looms over not just the country, but the entire continent? Churchill knows what risks the U.K. faces if it takes a stand, and decides one must be made anyway.
