a dark time in history

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2018)

Passionate, rousing film about the dark days of May 1940, when Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) became prime minister and resisted the idea of peace negotiations with Germany.
I suppose hindsight is 20/20 but honestly - Hitler takes Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium , and was on his way to France, who had no defense planned (how many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris from attack - answer, no one knows, it's never happened), and there were people in Parliament that thought Hitler would negotiate a peace treaty.
After taking over from Neville Chamberlain, Churchill finds himself alone in wanting England to defend itself. His speeches rally the people, and in the end, England fights.
Now, it's never good to get your history from the movies. Films take dramatic license, combine characters, events, and telescope time to make a compelling story. There are a few things here that are fictional, the biggest one being Churchill going into the subway. That should have been cut.
Also, history tells us that although in the film, Churchill agrees to at least listen to a proposed peace agreement - in reality, he never considered it and never agreed to it. Chamberlain is depicted saying he is dying of cancer; Chamberlain never told anyone he had cancer because he was never told that himself.
The portrait of Churchill certainly matches what has been read and said about him. As everyone knows, Gary Oldman was magnificent. The rest of the cast did well, but it was Oldman's show.
The most impressive thing to me about this film was the director (Joe Wright's) ability to capture the tension, the pressure, and the fright of what Britain was facing - alone - since the U.S. wouldn't do anything. For FDR it was all about Russia, and in the end, we see that Russia was handed eastern Europe. The forces against Churchill are depicted as overwhelming - one historian suggests that there probably weren't the loud shouting matches as depicted, but certainly a great deal of discussion.