The Darkest Lighting

Rating: 8/10 (4 February 2018)

If the cast list had not mentioned Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, I would never have known. Only on a few glimpses did the prosthetics and makeup fail to convince, on only two or three turns did the phrasing of those famous speeches not match the recordings of the day.
The Darkest Hour does not deal with swashbuckling Spitfire dogfights or heroic Berlin or bust land actions, but the inner turmoil of one of this country's foremost wartime leaders.
Winston was not without faults; was not always sure and resolute. He was parachuted into a job, a poisoned chalice, following the abject failure of Neville Chamberlain and the appeasers. The same backseat drivers who sought to undermine Churchill once they had put him into Number 10. Halifax is shown as a viper in the bosom, whose blackmail and emotional coercion almost caused the great man to falter.
You need to watch the film to see what it was that, in the vision of Director Joe Wright and the scriptwriter, Anthony McCarten, turned Churchill's darkest hour to the bright uplands of optimism and victory.
The camera caresses every scene, with no unnecessary motion, no shaking - the drama shines throughout. The properties are given an attention to detail that convinces, except in a couple of instances. The red light from the BBC to denote the open microphone during a broadcast, was in real life small and green, not the volcanic glow bathing the whole room in scarlet. I'm sure that the Ford Popular car, whose bonnet we saw briefly, to denote an ordinary street, was a post war model. Others might spot more anachronisms, but I was far too swept away with the story to notice.
From the first to the last, the lighting is low, the colour grading desaturated and bathed in brown, so that it takes a short while to become accustomed to the gloom.
The sound is clear, the dialogue comprehensible, even to this viewer's increasing deafness. The music is apt, yet understated. The voices do not fight for your ears over the trumpets and timpani.
A cogent, moving account of a few days in May, 1940 when the future of our country hung on the wits of a few men.