Director:
Richard Loncraine Year:
2002 Rating: 7.0
Churchill's life was a complicated one that historians
have struggled with for decades. Monster or hero. Imperial despot or savior
of Western democracy. It depends on where you stick the pin in the chronology
of his life. Astonishing ups and downs, successes and failures. Generosity
and cruelty. His desire for the continuation of the British Empire was inbred
in his bones, part of his family heritage, an obsession that lasted his entire
life. As was the racist feelings he had for the darker subjects of that Empire.
He thought he was a man of destiny and perhaps he was.
This film takes place in the years leading up to WWII when Churchill was
in the political wilderness. Still a member of Parliament for the Conservative
Party but with no power and little influence. Most thought his time was past
and he was no more than a gadfly about not giving India its independence
and warnings about Germany. Churchill made two great predictions in his life.
That Hitler wanted to conquer Europe and that the USSR was going to build
an Iron Curtain around Eastern Europe and that a Cold War was coming. Two
for two.
Reading about this period is more fascinating than watching a movie about
it. There was just so much happening that this film can't get into since
the focus is on Churchill. He makes speech after speech about the militarization
of Germany and that England had to re-arm. Few were listening to him. Those
in power said too expensive and it would send the wrong signal to Germany.
The film also spends a fair amount of time on his loving relationship with
his wife Clemmie. And on a man in the foreign office named Ralph Wigram.
A real person as are all the characters in the film. Wigram was one of the
few who felt as Churchill did about Germany and began handing Confidential
papers to him with information he could use. Not really sure why the film
went down that path but reading about him is quite interesting. This makes
a nice companion piece to Darkest Hours which begins where this ends.
A fine cast. Albert Finney as Churchill, Vanessa Redgrave as his wife, Jim
Broadbent as a friend, Derek Jacobi as the PM Stanley Baldwin, Tom Wilkinson
as Wigram's boss, Hugh Bonneville as a member of Parliament, Linus Roach
as Wigram and Lena Headey as his wife. Finney is fine as Churchill, nearly
unrecognizable and getting the voice and movement down very well. Definitely
better than his take on Hercule Poirot! The title comes from Churchill's
monumental series of books about the war. There are a few other adaptations
of it, one starring Richard Burton as Churchill.
