BEFORE: Taking a quick look at historical events for May 29, it was on THIS day in 1919 that Arthur Eddington tested the relativity theory of Albert Einstein during that solar eclipse. Damn, I was off by ONE DAY, I posted my review of "Einstein and Eddington" on May 28. Grrr, so close, why didn't I check Wikipedia before posting? I could have held off one day to make things line up perfectly, right? Or I could just change the date on the review, but that feels a bit dishonest. Let's just say it's close enough, can we do that? Also close enough is today's film, which counts as my last war-based Memorial Day film, and Memorial Day is technically tomorrow, not today. Geez, it sure feels like I'm consistently off by one day here, maybe this means I should have included "An Accidental Studio" when I had the chance, then both films would have lined up better with the calendar - it's a weird sign in both cases that I'm just a BIT off. But then, I never really know until I reach the end of the Movie Year if I should have included one more film somewhere along the way, or squeezed in one too many - all I know right now is that if I come up one film short in December, I'm going to think back to the week of Memorial Day and how I could have included ONE more film, maybe.
The best I can do right now is hit Father's Day right on the nose for June 19 and then put the "right" film on July 4, then maybe I can lose this feeling of being like 99% accurate with my timing. Donald Sumpter carries over from "Einstein and Eddington".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Gathering Storm" (Movie #4,150)
THE PLOT: A look at Winston Churchill's life and career at the end of World War II.
AFTER: Well, this is pretty much a remake of "Darkest Hour", except for the fact that this BBC/HBO TV movie was made first, about 8 years before Gary Oldman won his Oscar for playing Churchill. I think Oldman won the Oscar, at least partially, because of the amazing physical transformation into Churchill, via hair and make-up, obviously - Albert Finney also bore a remarkable resemblance to Winston, more so than Brendan Gleeson in the sequel, I daresay. Generally speaking, for me, Albert Finney is the BEST choice for whoever it was he played - he was the best Ebenezer Scrooge, or at least my favorite, he was the best Vonnegut character in "Breakfast of Champions", the best Hercule Poirot of all the actors who played him, the best Daddy Warbucks, and by far the best Tom Jones in "Tom Jones". He passed away in 2019, so I don't know why he wasn't cast in this sequel to "The Gathering Storm", that would have at least maintained some continuity, and made my linking much, much easier. It's almost like the casting directors in 2009 didn't care about some guy who would be watching movies in a linked-actor pattern 13 years later.
Ah, and I thought of the potential linking just a bit too late - Adolf Hitler. These war movies are always using archive footage of Hitler, in "The Gathering Storm" Finney as Churchill watched a typical newsreel of a Hitler rally. I figured there was an even-money chance that "Into the Storm" would also feature Hitler footage - and SIX movies last year used footage of Hitler, and they weren't all documentaries. And the IMDB doesn't always list the people who appear in stock footage, I end up making a lot of suggested corrections to the IMDB. But no, there's no footage of Hitler in "Into the Storm", it's a glaring omission - but this means I was right to include "Einstein and Eddington" as a linking film.
"Into the Storm" basically begins with Churchill being named Prime Minister of the U.K., in addition to Defense Minister - yes, he held BOTH jobs at the same time, for a while. P.M. Chamberlain is shown resigning (I've seen this depicted in other films before) and then suggests that Lord Halifax (who's in the room) take his place. Lord Halifax, however, thinks that Churchill (also in the room) would do a much better job, and go figure, Churchill agrees. Duh.
This is followed up with the Dunkirk disaster, the failed evacuation and the large private-boat rescue of the British troops from the French coast. Instead of losing their entire army, the British people were rallied to volunteer their ships and their effort, and the majority of the U.K. troops were saved, so that they could come back later and invade during D-Day. Churchill then rejects any idea of surrender to or parley with Germany, and instead adopts the strategy of KBO - "keep buggering on." Because even in wartime, it's important to do the things that make you feel normal, like buggering (umm, look it up.). Churchill then gathers members of both parties together and forms a coalition government, setting aside political differences to win the war. Gee, I wonder what THAT feels like, seeing both political parties in your country working together to solve a larger problem, like, say, racial injustice or rampant gun violence. Or even a virus that infects everyone, regardless of their political leanings...
The German planes bomb Britain, and the British planes bomb Germany - but the U.K. planes were engaged in night bombing, which didn't do much except blow up a few cows in the German fields, so the top brass encouraged Churchill to target prominent German factories, and the cities they were in. And that's what destroyed Dresden and some other German cities, civilian casualties be damned - all's fair in love and war, remember? Then we're shown Churchill encouraging RAF pilots just before the Battle of Britain. This film doesn't really have a lot of time, so they had to resort to something like a "Greatest Hits of World War II" approach. Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few...
Then we get to Churchill encouraging Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war, as the U.K. felt more or less alone. Probably nobody was happy to hear the news about Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but Churchill may have come close to jumping for joy. Churchill and his aides then meet with Stalin and thanks to the interpreters, there's a summit meeting about war strategy, and an awful lot of drinking is involved. D-Day is name-checked here but not really given a lot of time, but there are other movies to watch if you really want to see what happened there. Before long, cinematically speaking, there's news of Germany's surrender and Churchill is invited to join the King and his family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
But it's all downhill from there for Churchill, sad to say. The coalition government is dissolved, even though technically the war's not fully over, it's still going on in the Pacific against Japan. But the Labour Party gains control, and Churchill gives a radio speech comparing them to Communists, and saying they'd need to resort to "some kind of Gestapo" to maintain control. Soon after Churchill was voted out of office, because everyone was tired of the war and just wanted to get back to normal - and Churchill represented wartime thinking.
Churchill sort of left the public eye again, as he'd done back in the 1930's - he hung around the house, painted landscapes, fed his many animals, fought with his wife and yelled at his servants. The problem with the film's structure, though, is that they worked in a number of these post-1945 scenes with the World War II-set scenes, it's all mixed up. The intent was clearly to use the scenes of Churchill in retirement as a framing device, then flash back to the important war-time incidents, but it's just too much jumping around in time. In this scene Winston and Clemmie are talking about how the war is over, then in the NEXT scene the war is still going on, and it ends up not making any sense. Obviously the post-retirement scenes are boring, and if you had to watch all of them at the end of the film you'd walk out of the theater or fall asleep, because the war is the exciting part. So OK, then, just add more war-time stuff and end the film with Churchill being voted out - if the retirement scenes are boring and meaningless, then why not edit them out entirely, instead of messing with the space-time continuum?
The film also shows Churchill resigning as Prime Minister in a scene with King George VI in it, but that's a huge mistake - Churchill was out as P.M. in 1945, but he stayed in Parliament as the leader of the opposition party until 1951, at which point he served AGAIN as Prime Minister, partially under the young Queen Elizabeth II, until 1955. It's hard to believe, but Britain's got the SAME queen today as it had when Winston Churchill served his 2nd stint as P.M.
"Into the Storm" probably should have been split into two films, one dealing with the wartime stuff - God knows there were many other WW2 battles that didn't even get mentioned here - and then another for the Post-WW2 stuff. Never in the field of cinema has any movie tried to do so much with so little running time....
Also starring Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "Hampstead"), Adrian Scarborough (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Clive Mantle, Jack Shepherd (last seen in "Greed"), Iain Glen (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), James D'Arcy (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Bill Paterson (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Bruce Alexander, Janet McTeer (last seen in "Carrington"), Michael Elwyn (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Robert Pugh, Terrence Hardiman, Garrick Hagon (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), Len Cariou (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Patrick Malahide (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Geoffrey Kirkness, Philip McGough, Michael Pennington (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Aleksey Petrenko, Andrew Havill (last seen in "The King"), Adrian Fort, Kathryn Sumner, Michael Hadley (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Emma Hamilton (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), Alister Cameron, David Charles, Morgan Thomas, Patrick Brennan, Kenneth Bryans, John Albasiny, Teresa McElroy, Miranda Colchester, Mark Lingwood (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Diary"), Paul Kelleher and archive footage of Laurence Olivier (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Vivien Leigh (last seen in "Gone With the Wind").
RATING: 5 out of 10 cigars
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