Film Review - Darkest Hour (PG)

You have the weight of the world on your shoulders. 

There's a tangible sense in Joe Wright's Darkest Hour of encroaching darkness. The greatest success of this noteworthy (if flawed) film is nailing just how high the stakes were in May of 1940, as the British War Cabinet wrestled with how they should respond to the threat from Adolf Hitler's approaching forces. It's a story  - Britain bracing itself as Nazism relentlessly advanced towards its borders - that's been told before in multiple ways, but never with a heavier feeling of of dread. Twenty minutes in I leaned to my cinema-going partner and muttered 'My parents lived through this.' In all my life I don't think it's hit me quite so powerfully.

The film centres on Winston Churchill's first twenty-five days in office as Prime Minister, following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. Selected as a compromise to appease the opposition parties, he finds his instinctive resistance to Nazism at odds with those who would strike a deal with Hitler in order to prevent invasion. As European nations fall in rapid succession, the War Cabinet is locked in an impasse, Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax insisting with Chamberlain that negotiation with Germany is the only reasonable option. Will the country appease a monster to survive, or risk incalculable loss in taking a stand?

To the film's credit you see Halifax's viewpoint as clearly as Churchill's. Wright's stunningly imaginative direction provides a sense of the the shrinking odds - gliding aerial views staring down on the ravaged surfaces of mainland Europe and fraught faces poring over pin-studded maps of the Cabinet War Rooms. Not a single shot is wasted. The enemy is closing, with Britain's soldiers hemmed on the French coast, and the claustrophobia is palpable. Dario Marianelli's score piles on the tension and you grasp what these men were wrestling with. Without benefit of hindsight, the implications of their decision-making are truly terrifying.

Much praise has been heaped on Gary Oldman for his performance as Churchill, all of it deserved. It's not simply that his appearance and voice are transformed, it's that he channels so many aspects of the wartime PM's personality - the bullying and bluster, the sharp humour, the humanity. But aided by the screenplay he also makes Churchill vulnerable, as friends run short and even the US President cannot much help him. 

His scenes with wife Clemmie (Kristen Scott Thomas in loving no-nonsense mode) brim with tenderness, and those with Lily James as secretary Elizabeth Layton portray a touching connection with the young woman who comes to believe in him utterly. Meanwhile his altercations with Halifax are explosive, Game of Thrones' Stephen Dillane providing the other half of an epic political match. And with Ben Mendelsohn as George VI (remember how evil Mendelsohn was in Star Wars tale Rogue One?) he is part of a comically awkward and ultimately quite affecting double-act.

The major issue I have with the film stems ironically from its honesty in portraying the inordinate pressure on Churchill. By showing the PM's resolve nearly buckle (Oldman is particularly brilliant in these moments), the screenplay then searches for a way of shoring up his spirits. The dramatic device to which it resorts seems both trite and at odds with the rest of the film. I know what writer Anthony McCarten is aiming for, but it's infinitely more convincing when we're sweating away with the Cabinet members in a fog of moral uncertainty. The drama is way too convincing in its gravity to then resort to a sequence that seems like a cheap trick, one that jars with the film's overall tone.

That (admittedly major) misstep aside, this is an impressive and powerful movie - filtered steely-grey and rich in detail that plants you firmly in London, May 1940. More specifically it thrusts you in the rooms of power at a moment when, due to one horrendous threat, power seemed to be running out. And that's a very scary place indeed to find yourself.

Gut Reaction: Utterly locked in - for 90% of the running time.

Where are the Women? 1940s Whitehall was a solidly male environment, but Scott Thomas and James invest significant roles with spirit and steel. 

Ed's Verdict: 7/10. Sadly I can't reconcile myself to one aspect, or the score would be higher. But this is still a must-see - for Wright's imagination behind the camera and Oldman's genius in front of it.