DIRECTORJoe Wright
CASTGary Oldman, Lily James, Kristen Scott
Thomas, Ben MendelsohnPLOTGreat Britain is in turmoil. Hitler is on the
verge of taking Europe and his troops are
advancing on the beaches of Dunkirk. The nation
is under threat of invasion and Winston Churchill
must choose between peaceful negotiation and
standing his ground.OUT11 JANUARY
RATEDPG/125 MINS★★★★
DARKEST
HOUR
VERDICT A handsome and hugely rewarding
drama with a tour-de-force performance by
Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, Darkest Hour
may play with the facts, but it is a must-see
piece of cinema.The British Bulldog is victorious.
No stranger to acting under a ton of latex,
especially in Ridley Scott’s Silence Of The Lambs
sequel Hannibal, Oldman’s rollercoaster career
has seen the chameleon take on a host of real life
subjects including Sid Vicious, playwright Joe
Orton, Lee Harvey Oswald and Ludwig Van
Beethoven, but this is the one that should see
the Brit fi nally picking up an Oscar come
awards season.
Following Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk
and Their Finest, Darkest Hour is one of three
recent, and very different, productions to tackle
various aspects of the heroic beach landings on
Dunkirk in WWII. Beautifully recreating the era
with the kind of style and panache you would
expect from the director of Atonement and Anna
Karenina, the streets of London bristle with life
and the catacombs that become the government
war room are frenetic and claustrophobic. Some
of the airborne shots of Hitler’s bombers
attacking the London skyline are breathtaking.
The fi lm’s greatest asset, apart from the
barely recognisable Oldman, is the sense of
humour the fi lm imbues into one of the most
desperate times in British history. Already well
into his twilight years when he begrudgingly
took the role after Neville Chamberlain resigned
due to illness and the mental ravages of leading a
country into war, Churchill remains an irascible
rogue, constantly goading his hapless assistantsand berating all who listen to him while
his world-weary wife, brilliantly played by
Kristen Scott Thomas, looks on. The cast also
includes Baby Driver’s Lily James as Elizabeth
Layton, the fi rst assistant to win Churchill’s
respect and Aussie Ben Mendelsohn giving
some stiff upper lip as King George VI, the
monarch who will eventually become Churchill’s
willing confi dant.
The political machinations between
Churchill, foreign secretary Viscount Halifax
(Stephen Dillane) and Chamberlain (Ronald
Pickup in a role originally given to John Hurt
before his untimely passing) resonate, but the
veracity of certain moments is certainly in
question. Did Churchill really take a journey
on the London underground to chat to a
bunch of cheeky cockneys about the mood on
the street before he made his infamous battle
cry? Did he really fudge his fi rst attempt at his
“V for victory” sign? In this instance, it doesn’t
matter. Darkest Hour is an entertainment, not a
historical document, and at its core is one of the
fi nest performances of Oldman’s brilliant career.
DAVID MICHAEL BROWNIT’S LIKE WAITING for a London bus:
you stand about for ages for a defi nitive
on-screen Winston Churchill, and then three turn
up in a row. It’s a testament to the brilliance of
Gary Oldman’s astonishing performance as
Britain’s most famous Prime Minister in Joe
Wright’s Darkest Hour that, even though John
Lithgow had given us a stellar Winnie in The
Crown and Brian Cox toked a good cigar in
Jonathan Teplitzky’s Churchill, Oldman’s turn as