The beloved and I went to see Darkest Hour because Gary Oldman was playing Churchill. That’s it. Oldman as Churchill. It didn’t need to be nominated for every award going when someone says there’s a man juggling geese in the next street, you get your boots on.
I love Gary Oldman. I love him with a pure and true love. He was my Sid Vicious, my Joe Orton, my Dracula and he tied with Alec Guinness for being my George Smiley because the man can convey emotion with the back of his head. He was brilliant in Leon, classed up Friends, broke my heart in Harry Potter. I sat through Lost In Space for that man!
His performance deserves all the praise. His Churchill is flawed and human, not the “greatest Briton whoever lived” guff that we usually hear. Churchill had got so many things wrong in his career that he was a laughing stock. He suffered from depression, was short-tempered, rude and flighty but he was smart, caring and, most importantly, right about Hitler. Oldman shows the contradictions. The fear and doubt as well as the resolve.
The film itself is a slow burner. The tight time frame does add to the tension. The British position in May 1940 was staring at a real possibility of defeat. I obviously wanted to punch Halifax in the mouth but I’m a modern woman who knows the outcome of the war. Viscount Halifax was pushing for peace as a man who had seen the devastation caused by World War I and whose religious convictions were against further conflict. This isn’t in the narrative of the film so I’ll be hitting the books to find out more.
If you really want to give yourself an emotional wallop, watch this, then Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. You’ll then need a lie down.