Butler's Cinema Scene

Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill

“DARKEST HOUR”  My rating: B

A confession.

I’ve often found Gary Oldman  a shameless scenery chewer. Villainous roles were especially problematic; you could actually see Oldman twirling his mustache, metaphorically speaking.

2011’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” gave us a more settled, thoughtful Goldman, who portrayed John LeCarre’s good gray spookmaster George Smiley with an admirable degree of restraint.

Now, in  “Darkest Hour,” Goldman tackles the iconic role of Winston Churchill, and it’s a match made in heaven.  Sir Winston was, after all, no slouch at scenery chewing; yet Oldman’s performance here is subtle and balanced, a deft blend of  bombast and inner activity.

It’s a performance of such insight and power — abetted by David Malinowski’s spectacularly effective makeup design — that it immediately propels Goldman into the front ranks of this year’s Oscar contenders.

Joe Wright’s film centers on one month, May of 1940, when the long-out-of-favor Churchill was elected Prime Minister after the collapse of Neville Chamberlain’s ineffectual government.

The P.M. is faced with seemingly insurmountable problems. The Nazis have taken over much of Europe and are pounding the British army at Dunkirk. If those 300,000 or so soldiers are captured or killed, it will leave Great Britain defenseless.

Voices within his own party are urging Churchill to sue Hitler for peace. It’s the only way to escape a bloodbath and an armed invasion.

Churchill doubts that Der Fuhrer is in any mood to grant concessions. If only he can save the troops waiting on the French coast, galvanize public opinion, and overnight turn his country’s prevailing ethos from dovish to hawkish.

Kristin Scott Thomas, Gary Oldman

Which he, of course, does…though not without lots of soul searching.

Director Joe Wright keeps what is essentially a history lesson perking along with a slew of good performances. Kristin Scott Thomas is just about perfect as Clementine Churchill, who after a lifetime partnership knows her husband enough to give a clear-eyed assessment of both his faults and strengths; Lily James is fine is the new secretary initially terrorized by the bad-tempered old man, later a worshiper.

Churchill’s political friends and foes are portrayed by a small Who’s Who of Brit thesps: Stephen Dilate as Viscount Halifax, whose argument for avoiding bloodshed may be morally correct but historically disastrous; Ronald Pickup as the hapless Chamberlain, Samuel West as Sir Anthony Eden.

And who would ever have thought of casting Ben Mendelsohn, whose resume is filled with petty crooks and drug addicts, as the reserved and disapproving King George VI (who, like everyone else, underestimates the P.M. and ends up adoring him)?

Anthony McCarten’s screenplay comes down to a hammy but hugely effective scene in which Churchill, weighted with doubt, takes his first ride ever on the London tube.  The commuters are stunned to find themselves in the presence of the bulldoggish prime minister, but when he starts his own informal polling of his fellow countrymen they respond with vigor and determination.

Hitler? Shag ‘im. Surrender? Not likely. Tough it out? Elementary.

That’s enough for Churchill. If other Britons are cut from the same cloth as these working-class Londoners, he’ll take the fight to Herr Hitler and stomp his fascist ass.

| Robert W. Butler