![]() So the next time your local MRA pipes up about men losing jobs to political correctness, just point them to Darkest Hour or its soul twin, Dunkirk, and let them take solace in the fact that gender and racial parity remain a distant reality.Īs mentioned above, Darkest Hour cheerily pads its film with a white cast, setting aside just one speaking role for a non-white actor. She has no backstory beyond what Churchill wants to know, and only when it’s relevant to his own interests.Įvery single one of those actors received a paycheck for a job solely reserved for a white male. Layton is used as a proxy for the audience: a voyeur, who is timid and subservient. ![]() Women are absent from this film but for Churchill’s typist, Elizabeth Layton (Lily James), and Churchill’s wife, Clemmie (Kristin Scott Thomas). I wish I’d spent these hours on a documentary instead, for Churchill’s legacy is interesting enough without the golden halo McCarten and Wright have retrofitted around this rightfully controversial figure. But while I’ll discuss its social failings in more detail below, on technical merit alone I still couldn’t recommend Darkest Hour. It’s a snoozefest. Were I not already soured on a film that demands an utterly incurious audience, the simple fact of both Churchill and Oldman being on record for anti-Semitic and racist remarks makes it impossible to blithely cheer for either man. This hagiographic soup obscures any criticism of Winston Churchill, choosing instead to burnish the reputations of both the former British Prime Minister and the actor who plays him, Gary Oldman. The result is an eye-rolling affair that does a disservice to a fascinating piece of history. And then it repeats itself like a wash cycle, over and over again. Long stretches of soliloquy flounder from scene to scene in a mess of self-important platitudes about the power of oratory, or about how patriotism is good, and about how Hitler is bad. Unfortunately, the writing does little to meet it halfway. Darkest Hour builds its universe on the shoulders of beautiful cinematography: lighting, framing, and camerawork all tag team to create dramatic tension.
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