BEFORE: Here's the OTHER 2017 movie about Winston Churchill, I feel bad that I'm not watching them in chronological order, but what can I do? Ideally I think I should have watched this one, then "Dunkirk", then "Churchill" but the linking I came up with suggested a different order. We're going back to May 1940 for this one, closer to the start of World War II.
Stephen Dillane carries over again from "King Arthur".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Churchill" (Movie #3,319)
THE PLOT: In May 1940, the fate of Western Europe hangs on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler, or fight on knowing that it could mean a humiliating defeat for Britain and its empire.
AFTER: So, who wore it better, Brian Cox or Gary Oldman? Brian Cox didn't need to use extensive make-up or prosthetics, he just gained 20 pounds and shaved his head. I think more work was required to make Gary Oldman look like Churchill, but that shouldn't be confused with acting ability. Oldman won the Best Actor Oscar that year, so the tendency is to give him the nod, but that's equating results with effort, and that's a bit like putting the cart before the horse. To me it's a toss-up, but the key difference is that in "Darkest Hour" we're seeing Churchill's rise to power, his appointment to Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain got the sack, and in "Churchill" we see him right before D-Day, and he's dealing with the fact that his role in the war effort has dimmed somewhat, Eisenhower didn't even want to hear his concerns over what could go wrong with Operation: Overlord.
"Darkest Hour" has the more depressing title, but the overall message is brighter, as we get to see the Dunkirk evacuation from another angle, since apparently it was Churchill who thought of enlisting civilian boats to travel across the English Channel, after he was unable to convince Franklin Roosevelt to lend Great Britain 50 destroyers, or even 40. 30? How about a couple of rowboats and a life preserver?
You have to keep in mind here, that this was before the U.S. was involved in World War II, and Roosevelt makes reference to some kind of non-interference pact. I just looked it up, this was the Neutrality Act of 1939, and it prevented the U.S. from taking sides in the European conflict, I assume this went out the window after Pearl Harbor. But at this moment in 1940, the U.S. couldn't send any ships to help the U.K., they couldn't even deliver the airplanes that Great Britain bought from the U.S., with money they borrowed from the same party. Sounds like a work-around. The best FDR could offer was to land the planes within a few miles of the Canadian border, and have someone pull the planes across to Canada with horses.
The British Parliament was in a bit of a pickle, also. One faction refused to commit to war with Germany until they'd tried in every possible way to negotiate for peace. But this was before everyone realized exactly how much of a madman Hitler was, and Churchill, as the new prime minister, had to navigate these tough waters, with Chamberlain and the Viscount Halifax urging him to set up meetings with the Italian ambassador and also Mussolini, to act as a go-between with the Nazis. There's no good cop/bad cop there, and eventually Churchill came to the realization that peace with Nazi Germany would come at too high of a cost, essentially they'd be losing the war before even fighting it, and it would be almost equivalent to surrendering, and accepting a new status as some kind of slave state. The royal family would have to move to Canada and rule in exile, at least until things got properly sorted out.
Of course, negotiating for peace seemed like a better option with 300,000 soldiers stranded on the beach at Dunkirk, with no way to get them home. And this was the vast majority of the British army, so if they were lost through fighting, or abandoned on the beach, what other option would there be, apart from surrender? So this film really is the companion piece to "Dunkirk", it lends an added importance to getting those troops back across the Channel, by any means necessary. Once the troops were back, negotiations became less important, and the war could really begin in earnest - it's a lot easier to defend your country when you have control of your troops.
But we're led to believe that Churchill took advice from King George VI (who doesn't like Churchill at first, because he supported Edward VIII's marriage to Wallis Simpson, so there's also a connection here to the film "W.E") as the king told him to go out and listen to what the British people had to say. Allegedly this happened by Churchill riding on the Underground (subway) to the shock of the other riders, but to a person, they all supported the war and the defeat of fascism in Europe, no matter the cost. But is this really how it happened? Did all the citizens he spoke to agree on this point? Their descendants sure didn't seem able to agree about Brexit 75 years later....
In addition to being released in the same year, and focusing on the same British statesman, "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour" also use (almost) the same story point - in "Churchill" there is a typist/stenographer whose boyfriend is part of the D-Day invasion, and in "Darkest Hour" there's a typist whose brother is among the troops on the beach at Dunkirk. Sure, it's possible that in both cases that Churchill had a woman typing his messages with a personal connection to the current battle, but the simpler answer is that two screenwriters were drawing from the same well, and using the same bit of poetic license to shoehorn in some kind of personal investment in the current conflict to someone who happened to be close to Churchill at the same time. I'm inclined to believe this once, but not twice - now I think this didn't happen at all and in both cases was a cheap use of coincidence, even though the ends of those B-stories are different.
One of the posters for this film pitched it as "The film we need RIGHT NOW", which I presume was a dig at Trump - in other words, here's what a strong, decisive, commanding leader should look like. But I think we should be paying more attention to the depiction of Neville Chamberlain, the outgoing prime minister at the start of this film. It's a case where BOTH major parties in the British Parliament formed a coalition to work together to get rid of their ineffectual leader who was proposing negotiating with the countries enemies. You feel me? When your prime minister (or President, whichever) seems to be controlled, or suggesting support for, a dictator in a far-off country, one possible scenario is that BOTH major parties could join forces and work toward a common goal, that of removing him from office. Just saying, it CAN be done.
Also starring Gary Oldman (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Kristin Scott Thomas (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Lily James (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Ronald Pickup (last seen in "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Samuel West (last seen in "Notting Hill"), Richard Lumsden (last seen in "Sense and Sensibility"), Malcolm Storry (last seen in "The Scarlet Letter"), Nicholas Jones, David Schofield (last seen in "The Musketeer"), Hilton McRae, Benjamin Whitrow (last seen in "Quadrophenia"), Joe Armstrong, Adrian Rawlins (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), David Bamber (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Paul Leonard, Jeremy Child (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Brian Pettifer (last seen in "Vanity Fair"), Michael Gould (last seen in "Rogue One; A Star Wars Story"), John Atterbury (last seen in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Pip Torrens (last seen in "The Danish Girl"), Hannah Steele, Nia Gwynne, Ade Dee Haastrup, James Eeles, Flora Nicholson, Roisin O'Neill, John Locke (last seen in "The Favourite"), the voice of David Strathairn (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn") and archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9").
RATING: 6 out of 10 "V for Victory" signs (turned the correct way)
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