Film Review: DARKEST HOUR

Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill and his cigar.

The title of Darkest Hour is a misnomer; much more accurate would be Darkest Two Hours. This is because the film is very dark. Not only is the subject --Hitler's advance across Europe at the start of World War Two -- very dark, but what you see on the screen is emotionally as well as visually dark. And of course the theater you are watching it in is very dark, so all in all it's a damn dark two hours, give or take a few minutes. Now that you know and can prepare by having a cup of strong black coffee or a can of Red Bull just before going in, there are some other things you'd benefit from knowing as well.

Gary Oldman stars, with a capital S, as Winston Churchill, Britain's brand new Prime Minister; it's basically all Gary, all the time. I suppose he does a great job, but never having seen either Oldman or Churchill up close before, I can't say for sure. He garbles his words a lot, so if Churchill also did that, Oldman is spot on. He also, like Churchill, drinks and smokes incessantly and is sort of a fat, piggish boor, but apparently he is brilliant and saved England from falling under Hitler's rule, which certainly compensates for his other faults.

Just in case we have nodded off, which we certainly might have seeing as how everything is so dark and nothing happens except a lot of talking between stuffy men in suits, all of whom for reasons unknown to us also garble their words, the director (Joe Wright) has saved us the trouble of wondering how much we've missed by flashing the date on the screen in huge block letters every so often, sort of like this:

MAY 11 

It's advisable to try and stay awake since the film is very beautiful to look at, with gauzy views of rainy days in London and an especially lovely shot of seagoing vessels heading towards the beaches of Dunkirk with those famous white cliffs of Dover under a darkened sky in the background. Every so often there is a bit of slow motion footage of ordinary Londoners going about their day, not knowing that their world is about to be torn apart. Those are some lovely scenes, so keep an eye out for them. Also stay alert for British actress Kristin Scott Thomas who has almost no role as Churchill's devoted wife, Clementine. She is even more beautiful now than when she was younger, and her brief moments light up the screen.