Thought is was, in addition to other things, an excellent history lesson. Great performance by Gary Oldman. That said, I’m curious how much liberty was taken with certain aspects of the film. Specifically, did Winston Churchill really take the subway to Parliament prior to his now-famous speech?
The screenwriter says no, the subway scene didn’t really happen. But it was based on other incidents in Churchill’s life when he met with ordinary citizens to get their viewpoints.
I saw the movie with my parents, who are taking a course on Churchill and are slightly obsessed. They were very impressed with the level of historical accuracy.
I saw it the other night and while the grand arc of the story is realistic, there are some things that aren’t quite accurate (duh, it’s Hollywood). Perhaps the biggest change is that Churchill knew the success of Dynamo (i.e. Dunkirk) before he gave the last, rousing speech; the movie seems to imply that he doesn’t know how many troops will get back. (In fact, the movie Dunkirk ends with the same Churchill speech.)
The movie also implies that the average Londoner was in good spirits and ready to fight when the opposite was true. It was Churchill’s leadership and willingness to fight that brought much of the later resolve to endure.
I haven’t seen the movie, but 10 Downing Street is approximately three minutes’ walk from Parliament, and that much less by car. If he was supposedly coming up from the country, it would have been by car.
Just saw the movie in Florence, Italy. The music scorer is from Pisa, so he was there talking about the film. I’m not fluent in Italian so I didn’t stay for the q and a.
The part that took me out of the film, was the scene on the Underground. Too Hollywood.
Well done Gary Oldman though!
I’ve finally caught up with it. It is indeed a fine character study from Gary Oldman (and from Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine), but the history strikes me as more than a bit off.
Nor is it just the simple errors like listening to a parliamentary speech on the radio (that took another 40 years to happen), or Churchill sitting thoughtfully alone on the roof of a government building blazing with light and surrounded by cars lighting up the streets (if they spend so much time getting the visual details of clothes, hairstyle and furniture right, why would they overlook something like the blackout?). I also doubt the light relief point about the V-sign - “V for Victory” came a bit later, and someone who’d trained as an army officer and served in both the Boer War and the WW1 trenches could hardly not have known all about its offensive meaning and, when the campaign was under way, have realised the comedy propaganda value of supposedly getting it wrong.
The problem is the implied dramatic premise of “all out of step but our Winston”, and that nobody had a clue, e.g., about how to fight back or how to:( get the Dunkirk evacuation under way without his having a bright idea. I think I recognise some of the sources the scriptwriter must have used, but from my recollection they seriously over melodramatise the politics. That Chamberlain and Halifax personally conspired to get him out when he was barely in is a nonsense, to begin with. Chamberlain must have had hard feelings (I don’t know whether he already knew he was ill), but his resignation occurred because a significant number of his MPs had not supported him, and the consequences for the succession were obvious. Halifax ruled himself out of cotention, not in the sort of smoke-filled room cabal shown, but in a face to face meeting with just the government Chief Whip and Churchill: asked point blank by the Chief Whip what each of them thought, Churchill went to the window and said nothing, and Halifax broke the silence by saying he didn’t think there could be a PM in the Lords, and later he said that he couldn’t in any case see how a government could work if he were PM and Churchill were, as he would have to be, in charge of Defence matters. Of course there were doubts about Churchill’s personality and stability among the old guard, and maybe they waited to see how Chamberlain reacted before they themselves decided how to receive Churchill - but that’s far from trying to unseat him.
Likewise, in the War Cabinet debates, as I read it, first of all the question of seeking to negotiate through Italy came from the Italian Ambassador (maybe Mussolini was getting worried about being completely outshone by Hitler?). He may have implied a threat of resignation if the possibility were rejected outright at one point, but Churchill recognised the sincerity of his concerns for the consequences of a possible invasion and defeat - and in the end, Halifax stayed, and went on explicitly to reject any future peace feelers. While Chamberlain was more supportive of seeing whether it was an option or not, he ultimately accepted that whatever kind of agreement there might be, Hitler simply could no more be trusted to keep to it than to any of his earlier agreements. More to the point, Labour and Liberal leaders (in and out of the War Cabinet) supported Churchill’s position: it’s odd that having started with a surprisingly fiery-sounding speech from Attlee in the confidence debate, the scriptwriters show none of his or any other contributions from the other parties in the rest of the film until the Outer Cabinet meeting that settled the issue, and then they’re just there as an adoring audience rather than (as Churchill clearly hoped) a decisive factor.
And, yes, that “King come among his people” scene in the Underground is just too cringe-makingly gushy and implausible (all that awe-struck bobbing and curtseying? Oh perleeze).
I understand why the movie dramatized Churchill’s real-life tendency to
I’m usually a stickler for historical accuracy, but I’m not sure how the movie could have depicted the slowly changing tide of opinion without slowing the timing and extending the movie. I wish it had been possible, though. As a Slate article I found after viewing the movie a couple of weeks ago put it,
I thought this film did a far better job of depicting Dunkirk, as briefly as it was on screen, than the movie Dunkirk, which made it seem as though a couple dozen boats rescued the 340,000 British troops stranded there. And Gary Oldman was simply superb. The movie is worthwhile if only to see his performance.
Different people’s opinions mattered more at different times. On the period covered by the movie, it was the relatively closed world of the government and parliament. Once the full extent of the defeat, Dunkirk and the threat of invasion started to sink in, then wider public opinion and morale were paramount. One thing that struck me was the extent to which those brought back from Dunkirk were surprised by the welcome and concern they received - they had assumed they’d be under a cloud as failures. So wider public opinion was already firming up. By the time of the fall of France, the full danger had to be explained and grasped: and one of the advantages of fine phrase-making, like the “finest hour” speech, was that it could provide a narrative to be retrospectively applied in the future, as much as a current exhortation. I think Churchill was well aware he was writing, as well as making, history.
Heh, on realizing it was Gary Oldman playing the part of Churchill, I couldn’t help but think that at one point they should have had this scene:
[Military underling] We have a whole army trapped at Dunkirk, Sir. How many do you think we ought to try to bring off the beaches?
[Churchill] Bring back everyone.
[Military underling]What do you mean, “everyone”?
[Churchill] E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E!!!
This is important to understand. As is the misconception about Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ moment, much used - inc by American Republicans - as a depiction of appeasement.
Neville Chamberlain was representing the interests of the people. When he retunred from Munich the streets were literally lined with people desperate to hear another war had been avoided - at this point it was only 20 after the unspeakable horrors of industrialised trench-based slaughter.
Another war, presumably on the same unholy, epic scale with the same enemy, was not something considered lightly.
I honestly believe a large chunk of the population would have considered rejecting the declaration of war against Nazi Germany had their not been a strong moral case to fight fascism.
I can’t find the scene where the family listens to the declaration of war by Churchill on the radio, but Noel Coward and David Lean nailed it petty well in this scene - from 2 minutes
In another, the father starts his monologue with "I come from a generation of men most of whom aren't here anymore". Great writing by Coward.