The story of French army soldiers Cyrano de Bergerac and Christian and the beautiful Roxanne is probably the history’s most case of catfishing. Written as a play in 1897 by Edmond Rostand, the love story of “Cyrano” has been reimagined as a musical by director Joe Wright.
When we first meet Roxanne (Haley Bennett), she is prepping for a date with Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn). She’s not enthusiastic; she’s holding out for real love, but the family is broke, and as her nanny says, “Children need love. Adults need money.”
What she doesn’t know is that her lifelong friend, King’s Guard swordsman Cyrano (Peter Dinklage), a little person with a larger-than-life personality, has been in love with her since the first time he laid eyes on her. “Even her imperfections are perfect,” he says to his best friend Le Bret (Bashir Salahuddin).
He has never told her—“My fate is to love her from afar,” he says—and may not get the chance to once she gets an eyeful of King’s Guard recruit Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and falls instantly in love.
Trouble is, Christian has no idea how to speak to her. For that, he turns to the brilliant and eloquent Cyrano to be his voice. Cyrano provides the words of love for Christian to woo Roxanne. He pens letters, provides lists of conversational witticisms and even literally provides Christian’s voice in the story’s famous balcony scene. Roxanne is utterly smitten with Christian, thinking he has the body of a warrior and the soul of a poet. “Every day I think can’t love him more,” she says, “then another letter arrives and my heart expands to love him more.”
It’s a bizarre love triangle, one that seems destined to leave Cyrano heartsick and alone.
“Cyrano” is an adaptation of the original Rostand play and the Off-Broadway musical by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, with lyrics by Matt Berninger and Carin Besser. Director Wright dovetails the two expertly, creating a film that pays tribute to its 124-year-old roots and the modern adaptation.
The bones of the story are intact but the presentation feels fresh. Wright is a stylist, creating the 17th century setting in a swirl of camera movement, interesting settings and sumptuous costumes. His trademarked baroque style has been dialed back from the (admitted beautiful) excesses of “Anna Karenina” and “Pan,” but his visions are as memorable as ever. One sequence, where Cyrano dispatches ten adversaries, is a startling bit of uncut camera choreography that will make your eyeballs dance.
The director weaves the music into the dialogue sequences seamlessly, avoiding the abrupt song-and-dance reality-breakers of so many musicals. The actors don’t suddenly start high-stepping either. It’s a more naturalistic approach that focusses attention, for better and for worse, on the emotion of the songs. As much as I liked many of the tunes, the lyrical quality varies, from the eloquent to the elementary.
Dinklage stretches his wings here as the romantic lead, the comedian and warrior. Cyrano is an outsider with a big heart who has resigned himself to being a background player in love. It’s a wonderful performance, made all the more poignant in the film’s closing minutes (NO SPOILERS HERE!).
“Cyrano” is a deeply romantic movie, a musical and a testament to the importance of real human connections, rendered in high style but always with a real, beating heart.
The animated “Spies in Disguise” features the voice of one of the biggest movie stars in the world and one of the strangest premises we’ve seen all year.
Will Smith voices Lance Sterling, the world’s greatest spy. “I’m out here saving the world,” he says. “That’s what I do.”
Back at HQ after a daring mission, he’s drinking from his #1 Spy mug when he’s taken into custody for stealing a secret weapon called the M9 Assassin. He claims he’s innocent, that a villain named Robot Hand (Ben Mendelsohn) stole his identity and made off the weapon. One daring escape later Sterling sets off to prove his innocence.
Trouble is, he’s easy to find so he tracks down the one person who can help him, MIT grad Walter (Tom Holland), a junior inventor in the agency’s Gadget Lab. “I need to disappear,” he tells the youngster.
Walter obliges, sharing his biodynamic concealment potion with Sterling. The spy disappears but not in the way he hoped. Instead of becoming invisible the next best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) thing happens. He turns into a pigeon. “There are pigeons in every major city,” Walter says. “It’s the perfect disguise.”
It’s a good way of going incognito perhaps but not practical in the hunt of Robot Hand. “I’ll come with you,” Walter says, “and show you all the advantages of being a pigeon. It might even make you a better spy.” Together they set off to find Robot Hand as Marcy (Rashida Jones), the agency’s head of security, tries to find and arrest them.
Featuring Pierce-Brosnan-era-007-style action and gadgets “Spies in Disguise” is frenetic, family friendly James Bond Lite. Directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane keep the pace brisk, pausing only to emphasize a gag but the movie works best not when it’s in action but when Sterling is adjusting to life as a pigeon. As his latent avian instincts come on strong, for instance, he finds he can’t resist eating garbage on the road. It’s goofy good fun that is more interesting than Sterling’s human form, which is all swagger.
The script, by Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor, also mines a considerable amount of humor from the odd couple pairing of Sterling and Walter. Sterling is a shoot first and ask questions later kind of spy while Walter favors unusual methods, like disarming the baddies with wild, glittery cat videos because, well, everyone loves a cat video. “You can do more by bringing people together than blowing them up,” he says.
“Spies in Disguise” is buoyant enough to entertain the eye but the messages for kids about the benefits of being part of a flock and celebrating our differences are expertly woven throughout.
From CTV News Channel: Richard sits down with Lashana Lynch, who stars alongside Brie Larson as ace pilot and single mom Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel.
The tagline for “Captain Marvel,” the latest Marvel origin story, is “Higher. Further. Faster.” but I would like to suggest another. “In Space, Everyone Can Hear You Scream Whee!” As Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) pierces our atmosphere, her banshee cry of sheer exhilaration pierces the soundtrack. “Whee!” She’s having fun and so should fans of the high-flying character.
There’s a bit of backstory. “Captain Marvel” begins, as all good superhero flicks do, on an alien planet. Hala is the home of the Kree, a race of powerful ETs ruled by an AI leader called the Supreme Intelligence (Annette Bening). Among the inhabitants of the planet are Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), mentor to Vers (Brie, not yet dubbed Captain Marvel). She is being trained as part of an elite band of space cops, who, shooting energy bolts from her wrists, tracks and hunts shapeshifting creatures called the Skrull. An insomniac, she is haunted by nightmares and mysterious images of another life.
To find context for her existence she travels to C-53—earth—during the Clinton years. There, while hunting down Skrulls who are searching for a weapon that would make them unstoppable in the universe, she meets Nick Fury, Agent of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (Samuel L. Jackson), who becomes entangled in her hunt for the earthbound Skrulls—including the world-weary Talos (Ben Mendelsohn)—and her search for her true identity.
“Captain Marvel” begins with a trippy, time-warping introduction to Vers’s past. It’s an orgy of fast cuts and establishes the film’s spirited tone. There’s a lot going on here, maybe too much, but at least it rips along like a cheetah attacking its prey. Things slow down once the film lands in 1995 California and the “Terminator-esque” story of a benevolent alien with superpowers kicks in.
The high points are lofty.
Larson finds the right tone, playing someone grappling with two identities, otherworldly and stoic one moment, swaggering playfully the next. Vers is a total girl power hero, with no love interest, other than a female best friend, she kicks but while the soundtrack blares “I’m Just A Girl” and tell her male mentor, “I have nothing to prove to you.” Larson keeps her interesting even though through much of the film Vers isn’t quite sure who she is or where she belongs in the universe.
Further separating her from her superhero colleagues is a purpose driven mission not born out of revenge but by powerful emotions and a sense of loss. Those motivations alone give the film a slightly different feel from others in the Marvel family.
Visually Vers, harnessing all the hurt of all the times she was told she wasn’t good enough or that girls shouldn’t try to do boy stuff, is a powerful feminist statement that helps drive the story and define the character. That it’s visually stunning is a bonus.
Supporting actors Jackson (we finally learn the unlikely why Fury wears an eye patch) and Mendelsohn find a balance between the film’s dramatic, action and lighter scenes.
Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, handle the character work with aplomb. Their previous films, indies like “Half Nelson” and “Mississippi Grind,” are studies in nuance, a trait lost in “Captain Marvel’s” larger set pieces. The action—and there is plenty of it, tends to be of a generic frenetically edited style. The convoluted origin story mixed with the cluttered action sequences suck some of the air out of the theatre but their take on the superhero character as both an outsider and one of us is as refreshing as it is unusual. “Whee!”
You don’t have to overtax the Google machine to find negative comments about being on set with Steven Spielberg. Type in “working with Steven Spielberg” and in 0.57 seconds 20,900,000 results appear, including an article where Shia LaBeouf rants, “He’s less a director than he is a f—ing company.”
LaBeouf’s resume is dotted with Spielberg-produced or -directed films like Disturbia, Transformers, Eagle Eye and, most famously, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but if Spielberg ever does the same search it’s unlikely they’ll ever pair up again. “You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf told Variety. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career.”
But that’s pretty much it for the negativity. There’s a story about Crispin Glover suing Spielberg for using his likeness in Back to the Future Part II and the critical drone that his films are overly sentimental, but primarily it’s LaBeouf against Spielberg and the world. Most of his other co-workers have nothing but praise for the filmmaker Empire magazine ranked as the greatest film director of all time.
This weekend he returns to theatres with Ready Player One, a sci-fi film that brings a virtual reality world called the OASIS to vivid life. Star Tye Sheridan calls the director a great and passionate collaborator who makes everyone feel equal on set. Co-star Ralph Ineson calls Spielberg “one of the most iconic figures of the last 100 years,” adding that it was difficult to takes notes from him on set. “When he is speaking to you your mind vaguely goes blank the first few times because your internal monologue just goes, ‘My god, Steven Spielberg is giving me a note.’ And then you realize you haven’t actually heard the note.”
All directors give suggestions on set, but it seems it’s the way Spielberg speaks to his actors that sets him apart.
Ed Burns remembers making a mess of several takes on the set of Saving Private Ryan to the point where Tom Hanks said to him, “I’ve seen you act before, and this isn’t acting.” Afraid he would be replaced, he got nervous and continued to blow take after take but Spielberg didn’t offer guidance. Two weeks passed. The cast started laying bets on who would be fired first.
Turns out, no one was fired and Burns learned a lesson he would later take into his own directorial efforts like Sidewalks of New York. The actor reports that Spielberg said, “I like to give my actors three takes to figure it out. If I step in after the first take and give you a note, especially with young actors, you’ll hear me rather than your own voice.”
Burns calls the experience “a life changer” adding it taught him that being a director is “about knowing when to give direction.”
The superstar director says the listening lesson was learned early in life. “From a very young age my parents taught me probably the most valuable lesson of my life: Sometimes it’s better not to talk, but to listen.”
There’s someone else Spielberg keeps in mind when making a film. “I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.”
In brand crazy Hollywood “Ready Player One,” the new sci fi film from Steven Spielberg, is an everything-old-is-new-again hybrid. Based on the novel of the same name from author Ernest Cline it’s not a reboot or reimagining of a comic book or old film. It’s an original story that may appeal to folks who say the movies only recycle ideas. At the same time it’s stuffed to the gills with enough pop culture icons to warm the hearts of any nostalgic moviegoer.
It’s 2045 and the world is a mess. Cities are a hodgepodge of dystopian horrors, overcrowded, polluted and corrupt. For the people, whatever joy can be mined from the desolate, depressing life comes from immersing themselves in a virtual reality world called OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation). “Except for eating, sleeping and bathroom breaks,” says Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), “everyone does everything in the OASIS.” Based on 1980s movies, pop culture and videogames, it’s a technological escape from the all-too-real societal ills that make life miserable. “These days reality,” Wade says, “is a bummer.”
When OASIS creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) died he created a way for Watts and his on-line Gunter pals—egg hunters—to find a way out of their IRL problems. The creator left behind an Easter Egg—if you don’t know that an Easter Egg is a hidden game message or image, give up now—amongst the game’s familiar pop culture characters. Whoever finds the three keys that unlock the Easter Egg will inherit the OASIS empire. Money, power, the whole nine yards. Watts, who lives in a vertical trailer park called The Stacks in Columbus, Ohio, along with his digital team the High Five, work to navigate the game and change their lives. In a race against time, they must beat the Sixers, an army of gamers employed by evil corporation Innovative Online Industries, in a war for control of the future.
Think your kids spend too much time playing video games? Get a load of Wade, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Aech (Lena Waithe), Daito (Win Morisaki) and Shoto (Philip Zhao). This crowd are best friends, although for most of the movie they have never met on terra ferma. They spend all their time on line, forming friendships, falling in love and eventually fighting for their real life lives.
“Ready Player One” takes off like a rocket. There’s a lot of set-up and Spielberg finds a way to impart information and keep it lively. He fills the screen with an industrial view of the future, contrasting Wade’s dour real life with his vivid on line adventures, visually developing the push and pull between reality and virtual reality that fuels the film’s story. A wild car race, featuring Freddy Krueger, King Kong and the Batmobile, establishes the OASIS in a way that the minutes of exposition surrounding it never could. It also establishes the film’s love of spectacle over story.
Spielberg dives deep into the VR world, intoxicated by the endless possibilities of mixing-and-matching pop culture iconography with an adventure story. When Wade says, “The limit of reality is your own imagination,” he could very well be talking to the director. The result is a frenetic film that is fun for a while but the whimsy soon gets bogged down with feverish detail. It’s a little too long, there’s too much exposition, too many twists for a story that can be boiled down to the notion that we should spend more time in the real world.
A tribute to “The Shining” is often quite fun and there are moments of levity but it isn’t about anything other than the adventure. The commentary on our own virtual lives are never expanded upon. Of a spark of on-line love between Art3mis and Wade, who hadn’t yet met outside OASIS, Art3mis says, “You only see what I want you to see. You don’t know me.” It’s a good starting point for a conversation about what happens when avatars become real people but instead we get more exposition.
“Ready Player One” is pure escapism that begs the question, Will there ever be a video game movie that really works? The function of storytelling is vastly different between videogames and film and yet filmmakers try for a amalgam, the best of both worlds. What we usually end up with is what Steven Spielberg finds in his treatment of “Ready Player One,” a film that honours the spirit of the games at the expense of great storytelling.
Baby Driver: Although it contains more music than most tuneful of movies “Baby Driver,” the new film from director Edgar Wright, isn’t a musical in the “West Side Story,” “Sound of Music” sense. Wallpapered with 35 rock ‘n roll songs on the soundtrack it’s a hard driving heist flick that can best be called an action musical.
The Big Sick: Even when “The Big Sick” is making jokes about terrorism and the “X-Files” it is all heart, a crowd-pleaser that still feels personal and intimate.
Call Me By Your Name: This is a movie of small details that speak to larger truths. Director Luca Guadagnino keeps the story simple relying on the minutiae to add depth and beauty to the story. The idyllic countryside, the quaint town, the music of the Psychedelic Furs and the languid pace of a long Italian summer combine to create the sensual backdrop against which the romance between the two blossoms. Guadagnino’s camera captures it all, avoiding the pitfalls of melodrama to present a story that is pure emotion. It feels real and raw, haunted by the ghosts of loves gone by.
Darkest Hour: This is a historical drama with all the trappings of “Masterpiece Theatre.” You can expect photography, costumes and period details are sumptuous. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. While this isn’t “Carry On Churchill,” it has a lighter touch that might be expected. Gary Oldman, not an actor known for his comedic flourishes, embraces the sly humour. When Churchill becomes Prime Minister his wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) makes an impassioned speech about the importance of the work he is about to take on. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
The Disaster Artist: The key to pulling off “The Disaster Artist” is not recreating “The Room” beat for beat, although they do that, it’s actually about treating Wiseau as a person and not an object of fun. He’s an outrageous character and Franco commits to it 100%. From the marble-mouthed speech pattern that’s part Valley Girl and part Beaker from The Muppets to the wild clothes and stringy hair, he’s equal parts creepy and lovable but underneath his bravado are real human frailties. Depending on your point of view he’s either delusional or aspirational but in Franco’s hands he’s never also never less than memorable. It’s a broad, strange performance but it may also be one of the actor’s best.
Dunkirk: This is an intense movie but it is not an overly emotional one. The cumulative effect of the vivid images and sounds will stir the soul but despite great performances the movie doesn’t necessarily make you feel for one character or another. Instead its strength is in how it displays the overwhelming sense of scope of the Dunkirk mission. With 400,000 men on the ground with more in the air and at sea, the sheer scope of the operation overpowers individuality, turning the focus on the collective. Director Christopher Nolan’s sweeping camera takes it all in, epic and intimate moments alike.
The Florida Project: This is, hands down, one of the best films of the year. Low-budget and naturalistic, it packs more punch than any superhero. Director Sean Baker defies expectations. He’s made a film about kids for adults that finds joy in rocky places. What could have been a bleak experience or an earnest message movie is brought to vivid life by characters that feel real. It’s a story about poverty that neither celebrates or condemns its characters. Mooney’s exploits are entertaining and yet an air of jeopardy hangs heavy over every minute of the movie. Baker knows that Halley and Moonie’s well being hangs by a thread but he also understands they exist in the real world and never allows their story to fall into cliché.
Get Out: This is the weirdest and most original mainstream psychodrama to come along since “The Babadook.” The basic premise harkens back to the Sidney Poitier’s classic “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” In that film parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, have their attitudes challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African American fiancé. The uncomfortable situation of meeting in-laws for the first time is universal. It’s the added layers of paranoia and skewered white liberalism that propels the main character’s (Daniel Kaluuya) situation into full-fledged horror. In this setting he is the other, the stranger and as his anxiety grows the social commentary regarding attitudes about race in America grows sharper and more focussed.
Lady Bird: Greta Gerwig’s skilful handling of the story of Lady Bird’s busy senior year works not just because it’s unvarnished and honest in its look at becoming an adult but also, in a large degree, to Saoirse Ronan’s performance. I have long called her ‘Lil Meryl. She’s an actor of unusual depth, a young person (born in 1994) with an old soul. Lady Bird is almost crushed by the weight of uncertainty that greets her with every turn—will her parents divorce, will there be money for school, will Kyle be the boy of her dreams, will she ever make enough cash to repay her parents for her upbringing?—but Ronan keeps her nimble, sidestepping teen ennui with a complicated mix of snappy one liners, hard earned wisdom and a well of emotion. It’s tremendous, Academy Award worthy work.
The Post: Steven Spielberg film is a fist-pump-in-the-air look at the integrity and importance of a free press. It’s a little heavy-handed but these are heavy-handed times. Director Spielberg and stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are entertainers first and foremost, and they do entertain here, but they also shine a light on a historical era whose reverberations are being felt today stronger than ever.
The Shape of Water: A dreamy slice of pure cinema. Director Guillermo del Toro uses the stark Cold War as a canvas to draw warm and vivid portraits of his characters. It’s a beautiful creature feature ripe with romance, thrills and, above all, empathy for everyone. This is the kind of movie that reminds us of why we fell in love with movies in the first place.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: The story of a mother’s unconventional war with the world is simple enough, it’s the complexity of the characters that elevates the it to the level of great art.
Wonder Woman: Equal parts Amazon sword and sandal epic, mad scientist flick, war movie and rom com, it’s a crowd pleaser that places the popular character front and centre. As played by Gal Gadot, Diana is charismatic and kick ass, a superhero who is both truly super and heroic. Like Superman she is firmly on the side of good, not a tortured soul à la Batman. Naïve to the ways of the world, she runs headfirst into trouble. Whether she’s throwing a German tank across a battlefield, defying gravity to leap to the top of a bell tower, tolerating Trevor’s occasional mansplaining or deflecting bullets with her indestructible Bracelets of Submission, she proves in scene after scene to be both a formidable warrior and a genuine, profoundly empathic character.
Winston Churchill, born 143 years ago, is suddenly hot again.
“When I started work on this movie in 2016 the only Churchill I had in mind was Albert Finney’s A Gathering Storm which was brilliant,” says Darkest Hour director Joe Wright. “It had been made more than a decade ago. We weren’t aware of the Brian Cox movie, we weren’t aware of Dunkirk, The Crown hadn’t come on yet. It didn’t feel topical at all. Then suddenly the events of 2016 happened and this wave of topicality came and overcame the film.”
The fireworks in Darkest Hour begin in May 1940. It’s less than a year into the Second World War and Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, is made prime minister after Neville Chamberlain lost the confidence of parliament.
He’s an unconventional choice. His own party thinks of him as a drunkard — it is said that between 1908 and 1965, he partook in 42,000 bottles of his favourite champagne Pol Roget — and members of his war cabinet favour negotiation with the Nazis over resistance and war. The so-called English Bulldog battles them and nagging self-doubt as he stays steadfast in his determination to fight the Nazis while finding an exit strategy for 300,000 British troops stranded at Dunkirk.
Wright likens Churchill’s crusade against Hitler to the resistance that has sprung up around the world in reaction to various far-right groups.
“Churchill got a lot of things wrong in his life,” Wright says, “but in this particular instance, in this context, with this enemy, he understood the perils totalitarianism and Nazism and bigotry and hate and he resisted. I think we are living in a society now that would not be the same if not for his resistance. I think that is really important to remember to fight back. To look outside of our important domestic concerns and look at our global domestic concerns.”
Darkest Hour is a historical drama with all the trappings of Masterpiece Theatre. Expect sumptuous photography, costumes and period details. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. When Churchill becomes prime minister, his wife makes an impassioned speech about the importance of his work. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
When I tell Wright I found the movie funnier than expected, he laughs. “Especially when it is called Darkest Hour.”
“I think Churchill was a very funny individual. Anyone you read who was with him, from his secretaries to his bodyguards to the politicians who were working with him, all talk about his humour. It was one of his overriding characteristics. We wanted to make sure it didn’t turn into Carry on Churchill so there were gags in there we cut.
“I think, like all of us, it was kind of a coping mechanism. The reason sex and death seem to be the main sources of humour is that they help us deal with things that might otherwise cause us anxiety. “
Wright adds that as the battle against totalitarianism unfolds the film becomes more serious. “His foe was probably the most terrifying adversary we had ever encountered, so the stakes were very high.”
”Atonement” director Joe Wright’s new film is a spirited—and funnier than you’d imagine—retelling of the machinations behind World War II’s Operation Dynamo. In a tour de force performance, “Darkest Hours” stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in a movie that would make a great double bill with Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.”
The fireworks begin on May 9, 1940. It’s less than a year into the war and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) has lost the confidence of parliament. His handling of the Nazi threat brought Britain into the war and, as a result, in poor health, he is forced to resign. On May 10 Winston Churchill is made Prime Minister.
He’s not exactly a man of the people. “I’ve never been on a bus,” he wheezes. “I’ve never cute for bread. I believe I can boil and egg but only because I’ve seen it done.”
He’s an unconventional choice. His own party thinks of him as a drunkard—it is said that between 1908 and 1965, he partook in 42,000 bottles of his favourite champagne Pol Roget—and members of his War Cabinet, who favour negotiation with the Nazis over resistance and war, begin plotting to remove him almost as soon as he takes power. “I’m getting a job because the ship is sinking,” he says. “It’s not a job. It’s revenge.”
In the coming days he battles politicians and nagging self-doubt as he stays steadfast in his determination to fight the Nazis while finding an exit strategy for 300,000 British troops at Dunkirk. “Nations that go down fighting rise again,” he says.
“Darkest Hours” is a historical drama with all the trappings of “Masterpiece Theatre.” You can expect photography, costumes and period details are sumptuous. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. While this isn’t “Carry On Churchill,” it has a lighter touch that might be expected. Oldman, not an actor known for his comedic flourishes, embraces the sly humour. When Churchill becomes Prime Minister his wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) makes an impassioned speech about the importance of the work he is about to take on. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
We also see the great man in quiet moments with Clementine, the source of much of his strength. The way he is a cowed by his wife when she’s called him out for not being kind to his new secretary (Lily James)—”I want others to love and respect you the way I do.”—reveal his vulnerabilities and tenderness.
Of course the film also showcases Churchill as a tactician, an orator—“He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle,” says Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) after one fiery speech—and a single-minded leader who came to embody the very spirit of English defiance in the face of threats from Germany.
At the heart of the movie, and on almost every frame of film, is Oldman who hits a career high. Underneath layers of makeup and with a cigar wedged in his face, he brings history to life in a performance that goes far past impersonation. The role is a study in resistance and leadership and is sure to earn Oldman an Oscar nomination.
“Darkest Hour” director Wright brings his trademarked visual flair. During Churchill’s first BBC speech to the nation, for instance, an overhead shot of the bombing in France turns into the face of one of Hitler’s nameless victims but the movie succeeds because Oldman breathes new life into a historical figure we thought we already knew.
