I grew up with Winston Churchill.
My witty, well-read, sarcastic mother loved quoting some of his best-known insults. As she recounted, when a journalist asked his opinion of Clement Attlee, Britain’s prime minister from 1945 to 1951, Churchill dubbed him “A modest man, who has much to be modest about.” He also dismissed Atlee as a “sheep in sheep's clothing” and famously jibed, “An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, Atlee got out.”
He was unsparing about Neville Chamberlain, too: “At the depths of that dusty soul there is nothing but abject surrender.” But it wasn’t until I started reading deeply about the Holocaust and World War II in college that I understood the man as much more than a source of lethal wit.
Churchill inspired a nation faced with catastrophe at Dunkirk where Britain’s army was surrounded by the Germans and teetered on the brink of destruction. He battled fiercely in the 1930s to push the British government to prepare for the war he knew was coming—and he despised Hitler. Not an easy man to like (or husband to live with), he’d made enemies left and right partly due to his stubbornness and his plans for Gallipoli in World War I which failed miserably.
He was passionate and irascible, witty and mean—especially to his secretaries. But he was a genius.
All that comes brilliantly alive in Darkest Hour, set around the Dunkirk disaster in the summer of 1940. Having read a number of books about Churchill, including the famous three-volume biography by William Manchester, I was mesmerized by the ways Gary Oldman captures every nuance of the larger-than-life man.
The film is stunning as we watch Churchill rise to the position he’s coveted for years, Prime Minister, and see fear-ridden cabinet members scheme against him. Worse than that, they push for a negotiated peace with Germany—ignoring Hitler’s violation of other agreements.
Cinematography is as important as anything else in this movie. Time after time we see Churchill alone, hurrying down a tunnel, brooding in the shadowy library at 10 Downing Street, talking to President Roosevelt on a phone in an underground toilet. Light is almost a character, whether from single bulbs or sunlight streaming into Parliament. That light often looks as if it could easily be extinguished and its tenuousness is a perfect choice to underscore Churchill’s isolation and desperation.
His battles with depression are lightly touched on as a source of his strength by his wife, the magnetic and soulful Kristin Scott Thomas. While the screenplay doesn’t flinch in showing him at his worst, it soars whenever he pushes for Britain to stand up to a tyrant and defend its freedom. His famous “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech is just one moment when you feel elated by Churchill’s heroism.
Darkest Hour will leave you exhilarated, and possibly wondering where our heroes are today, why our political rhetoric can be so commonplace, vulgar, and flat.
Lev Raphael is the author of the memoir-travelogue My Germany and 24 other books in many genres.