Darkest Hour

Or: Dawkest Houwh

Never, in all my years, I have I seen so many grown men assembled who had no relation to or interest in meeting the letter “R.” Through the dim, smoky rooms and claustrophobic underground of London the British powers that be, faced with a mighty and ruthless foe, struggle to control their won politics and settle upon a course of action entry bereft of their 18th letter. Our man Churchill (Gary Oldman), his rival Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane), King George the Sixth (Ben Mendelsohn) are the very soul of blustery uppercrustdom but there are points wewwe its wiwwly hawd to take them sewiously.

But I digwess. And am terribly unkind. There’s a tendency, especially in the arts, to mythologize any and all events surrounding the second world war; to make it “The Last Heroic Time,” a time of uncomplicated villainy and straightforward heroism. Director Joe Wright has done his best to paint Churchill as the kind of adapt flounderer, a capable man who is thrust into the worst possible position, unsupported, uninformed and mentally bankrupt. Wright balances on a seesaw between the mythic and the ordinary: the brooding house of parliament illuminated by a single shaft of sunlight or the gloomy halls of Buckingham Palace were the King waits like an oracle in his cave versus Churchill and his wife Clementine (the fabulously dry Kirsten Scott Thomas), flopping onto the bed, or Sectary Elizabeth Layton (Lilly James) laughing with another girl in the typing pool over a press gaff. The film also goes well out of its way to blind our twenty-twenty hindsight and show us the apparent wisdom of appeasement and peace that Halifax champions. Is Freedom worth fighting for to death?

Gary Oldman, getting in touch with his inner baby, deeply feels his way through England’s nightmare. His eyes are alive, bleary and teary, and speaking even greater volumes than his verbal powers can (at his lowest point, he takes on a childlike quality that’ll almost break your heart). Perhaps he might have watered down the veracity of his accent with some clarity and diction as I could only understand a half of his dialog. He gets on famously well with Thomas and with Mendelsohn, a gentle but calcified depiction of Windsor grace.

There are perhaps too many long-one-shot travel POV scenes (the production crew waggling their collective eyebrows) and some of the “historical” dialog given too much lift and polish and not enough spit.

Still, there are bits of movie-making genius, like the Prime Minister suspended alone in the underground, or a close up of the merciless sweep of a clock’s second hand. And the finale, and Oldman, finally strikes the right tone of rising to heroism through the muddle of uncertainty and terror, to become one who values Justice more than Order or Comfort. It certainly makes you want to go out and beat some fascists.