Darkest Hour - not a bright film

Rating: 3/10 (26 March 2018)

The film gets a lot of things right. It is peppered with authentic Churchill quotes, and if they didn't shoot some of the scenes in the actual War Rooms in Westminster, they had built a pretty convincing set. But, sadly, as a drama the film reminded me of Peter Richardson's old comedy, "The Strike" (1988) in which the 1984 miners' strike was ludicrously distorted in elaborate attempts to turn a political crisis into a touching sob story (of the kind in which the actors sob far more than the audience), complete with historically unwarranted motorcycle chases, courtroom drama, "Daddy, look, I can walk again!" and whatnot. However, "The Strike" was an intentional parody on a melodrama, "Darkest Hour" is altogether unintentional.
The film is not at all concerned with showing the real Churchill; it has pulled out all the stops to move us rather than enlighten us, and, as a consequence, we have Churchill, initially (and briefly) presented as an old, cranky and alcoholised curmudgeon, turn into a charming old Scrooge-after-his-conversion who blubbers out Macauley verse on the tube to a girl aged seven (this film's version of Tiny Tim, I suppose) and he is amply rewarded even by his opponents in Parliament with something resembling a ticker-tape parade at the end of the film. Extra drama is supplied by the lousiest secretary in the world (who should have been sacked three minutes into the film) with snippets of "my-brother-died-in-Calais", her bolstering a disheartened Prime Minister and prompting him in his speeches by mouthing his next line from the gallery. This secretary also corrects Churchill when he gets the V-sign wrong because the silly man is too removed from the real world to know that with the palm facing inward, it means "up yours". The film studiously forgets that Churchill was an expert historian.
I suspect the people behind the film wished to present Clem Churchill as the strong and independent woman she was, but instead "Darkest Hour" includes a most unfortunate scene which reduces her to an idiot housewife grumbling about household accounts while Europe is being run over by Hitler, thus forcing her husband to reassure her that he has always loved her - which apparently makes everything right again, although the household finances are still a shambles and Europe is still falling under the Third Reich at 200 mph. To me, that scene makes Clem look like a sentimental cow of small intellect.
In short, I was disappointed.