Darkest Hour

The last time DirecTV ran a free preview weekend, various channels in the Cinemax package were running Darkest Hour quite often, so I DVRed it. It looks like it's still in the Cinemax rotation, as well as being available on DVD, so I decided to watch it and do a post on it here.

It's May, 1940, at a period in World War II when the Sitzkrieg was just being ended by the Germans and their invasion of the Benelux countries. The British plans to defend against the Nazi invasion of Norway had failed, leaving Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) with an untenable situation in Parliament. Ultimately, he decides to resign as PM but stay on as head of the Conservative Party while a coalition government is formed.

There was some discussion as to who should lead the new coalition. Chamberlain originally wanted Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane), but in real life Halifax felt he was unsuitable as a member of the House of Lords and not the Commons. It was eventually suggested to have Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman), civilian head of the Navy, take on the role. This despite the fact that there were serious questions from Chamberlain and others in the Commons for Churchill's past failures; also King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) was less than thrilled with the prospect.

But, there was nobody else who could be agreed on, so Churchill became head of a five-member War Cabinet. Chamberlain and especially Halifax were still opposed to him and working behind the scenes to bring down the coalition government. They felt that suing Hitler for peace was the right course of action, while Churchill, who had spent much of the 1930s railing against Hitler, believed that if they sued for peace, Hitler would eventually come after Britain eventually.

Churchill, meanwhile, is facing problems from without as well as within. Germany has by this time invaded France, and the UK has a large number of soldiers stationed in France who are being forced into retreat, eventually to be surrounded at Calais and Dunkirk, from which there is no further retreat thanks to the fact that they've got the sea at their backs. This explains in part why Chamberlain and Halifax want a truce: they're worried about losing an entire generation of soldiers, which would make defense of Britain even more untenable.

Churchill, of course, eventually comes up with the idea of requisitioning as many civilian boats as possible and having them assist the Royal Navy in evacuating soldiers from Dunkirk, an operation portrayed in the movie Dunkirk which came out the same year as Darkest Hour. All of this is history, and so I don't think I'm giving very much away by detailing Churchill's success and the political defeat of Chamberlain. (The movie does reference the fact that Chamberlain also had terminal cancer, although apparently he didn't realize this in May 1940.)

Darkest Hour is an interesting movie going into more detail about a period of history that I think people in America know vaguely about but not to this level. Thanks to Churchill's ultimate success in leading Britain through the war, it overshadows the fact that there was some serious political pressure on him in the early days of his term as Prime Minister. That makes the movie well worth watching.

It's also worth a watch for Oldman's bravura performance as Churchill, which won him an Academy Award. He understandably dominates the movie, although Mendelsohn does well in his scenes as George VI. He and pretty much everybody else in the movie, however, are in support of Oldman.

I did, however, have some big problems with the movie, mostly on the technical side. The direction was extremely intrusive, right from the opening scene which I felt misused overhead shots, something which continued throughout the film. Director Joe Wright has a tendency to move the camera in ways which very much distract from the action. The lighting seemed wrong, too, which Churchill and other characters often in shadows when they shouldn't be, and other scenes (particularly in Parliament) too washed out. There's also a score which wells up inappropriately on many occasions.

That's a big shame, since I think it's hugely interefers with the excellent story and acting, but it doesn't make me not recommend Darkest Hour.