Replete with inaccuracies and fabrications yet ponderously and pretentiously presented as though a documentary. ‘History on Film’ I hope will demolish it in due course. Until then I offer my comments.
Because the gullible cinemitizens of IMDb will eat it up and think they now know the history it has to be nailed.
They rate it 7.4 from 94,328 votes and it runs two hours and five minutes. Its documentary approach goes day-by-day in May 1940 as Churchill took office, but it inserts events that occurred later in June in this May narration. It attributes to Clement Attlee, the Labour Leader, a position he never took. It trivialises the ‘V’ sign. It fabricates a Tube ride. It shows in May 1940 an American aircraft only manufactured in 1943. Ditto the automobiles. It garbles Churchill’s several meetings with Paul Reynaud who did want to fight on.
In short, despite the pretension of accuracy implied by the documentary approach, it is as careless with fake facts as the Twit-in-Chief.
It adds nothing to our knowledge of the Fox, Edward Halifax, nor does it explain the transformation of King George. These two figures are very well drawn by the actors, respectively, Stephen Dillane and Ben Mendelshon. Halifax remains a man of mystery. He was everyone’s obvious first choice as PM who stepped back and back. King George surprised Churchill by his conversion to the ‘fight ‘em on the beaches’ attitude by learning together with his wife to shoot a pistol.
Nor does the film credit Churchill’s long acquired mastery of parliamentary forms, rules, and conventions which he used to gain and keep support. The grand strategy was in his speeches; the killer tactics were in meeting schedules, ordering of items on an agenda, orchestrating other speakers, and so on.
Attlee had said repeatedly in public and private that he would continue to serve in War Cabinet regardless of whom the Conservative majority installed as PM. He did not make his service, and hence national unity, conditional on Churchill’s selection. It is unthinkable that he would have done so and he did not.
Though every detail of this time is well documented, the facts are not enough for the film-makers.
Having seen Churchill enacted so many times (Albert Finney, Robert Hardy, Timothy West, Brian Cox, Timothy Spall), it is impossible to see him with a fresh eye. Having said that, Gary Oldman seems to have compiled a host of external mannerism and ticks without any inward unity. The declamations, the cigars, the shuffling steps, the staring eyes, are all there without anything inside rather like an animation from Madame Tussaud’s wax work collection. The publicity hype says he studied many films of Churchill. No doubt. He has the walk; he has the talk, but he has no empathy for the man inside.
Disclosure statement. By some combination of button pushing I watched this in a French dubbed version on a trans-oceanic flight. I had not intended to do that but once it started I let it run as my French lesson of the day.
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