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Darkest Hour

 

 

Gary Oldman was 59 years old when he won an Oscar (Best Actor) for giving us a completely believable Winston Churchill who decided in June 1940 to fight Hitler instead of settling for a completely risky peace agreement.

Darkest Hour (2019, rated PG-13, 125 minutes) is a gem.

Oldman is Churchill: overweight, jowly, devotee of long cigars and whiskey, imperious, meekly in love with Clementine (he called her “Clemmie,” she called him “Pig”), a flamboyant patriot and wartime leader. Churchill was a career politician, of course, and Oldman deftly portrays his Machiavellian strengths and weaknesses.

Churchill was an aristocratic patriot in the core of his being. Less than a month after he became prime minister, Churchill energized parliament: “We shall defend our island…we shall fight on the beaches…on the landing grounds…in the fields…in the streets…in the hills…we shall never surrender.”

Darkest Hour is Churchill’s (Oldman’s) bright triumph.

 

 

Request a DVD of Darkest Hour through the Minuteman network

Request Darkest Hour on BLU-RAY through the Minuteman network

Read Darkest hour: how Churchill brought England back from the brink by Anthony McCarten; the basis for the movie

Download the audio book of Darkest hour: how Churchill brought England back from the brink by Anthony McCarten, from Hoopla

 

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