Movie Reaction: Darkest Hour

Formula: Lincoln / Dunkirk

I've spent the last few days trying to decide if the presence of Dunkirk hurts or helps Darkest Hour. It's certainly going to hurt some Oscar hopes. Either Darkest Hour will look slight in comparison to the scope of Dunkirk or the recency of Darkest Hour will push Dunkirk to the side. I know I'm tired WWII movies, so two different movies centered on the same event sounds tedious. Or, they could have the same effect as in 2016 when there was both a TV show and a documentary series about OJ Simpson: they inform one another and make both deeper experiences.

I haven't come up with an answer yet. What I can say is that I enjoyed Darkest Hour a lot. This shouldn't be much of a surprise. I'm a bit of a procedure wonk. I spent most of 2016 shouting praise for Eye in the Sky every chance I could. Darkest Hour is the same movie 60 years earlier in a lot of ways. Darkest Hour is one of the better "baptism by fires" I've seen.

As a biopic, the film is nicely limited. It takes place entirely during the first month or so of Winston Churchill's first term as British Prime Minister. He is handed a dire situation. Nazi Germany has nearly conquered all of Western Europe and the entire British army is trapped on a beach in France. Churchill refuses to open peace talks with Germany, but if he states this refusal on the record, his enemies in Parliament will use that refusal to kick him out of office. He has nothing but bad options to choose from and must find the least awful one that kills the fewest troops, pleases the British people, and doesn't get him removed from office as soon as he got the job. Needless to say, it's a trying time for Winston Churchill.

Gary Oldman is the focus of all the attention for this movie and rightfully so. Even ignoring the "it's his time" Oscar talk, this is a big, towering performance. The camera appears to think the movie is a hagiography even if the script says otherwise. Oldman disappears into the role - all the makeup helps. Really great make-up work too. It's not like Lincoln in which every scene is designed for him to give a speech. Churchill certainly fills every room he's in, but he's just as likely to mutter something in the corner as give a rousing speech. The film does a great job showing how Churchill was able to get to this lofty position and also what held him back from getting it earlier or more easily. It's not the must-see performance of the year, but it's certainly among the performances most vital to making a movie work.

It's not a one-man-show either. Kristen Scott Thomas plays Churchill's wife, Clemmie, who has clearly spent decades mastering how to prepare Winston for and present him to the public. Ben Mendelsohn is nice as King George VI, even though you can sense him saying "Don't do it like Colin Firth. Make it different" in the back of his mind the whole time. Lily James is Churchill's typist and a stand-in for the audience a number of times. She's good in what's a fairly anonymous role by design. There's a number of interchangeable old British actors who populate Parliament and Churchill's war council. They are collectively very good even if I couldn't pick any of them out of a lineup.

I have to give director Joe Wright and company some credit. They ratchet up the tension without making the film bombastic. You feel the weight of every decision on Churchill and that's not just because of the performance. A few a the camera tricks, like looking at Churchill through a small window on a door in a moment when he feels especially trapped by his circumstance, are a little on the nose, but there's a lot more good than bad.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend