THE DARKEST HOUR, THE OTHER FACE OF DUNKIRK - OUR REVIEW
Gary Oldman gives a great performance as an actor interpreting the Winston Churchill, the protagonist of a historical moment lately in the spotlight.
Unpredictable, uncontrollable, excessive, unruly, undesirable: it is imposing the Winston Churchill by Gary Oldman that Joe Wright (Atonement, Anna Karenina) staged in his The Darkest Hour presented at the Turin Film Festival. A sort of 'backstage' of Dunkirk told to us by Christopher Nolan in all his grandiloquence, and of which we review the origins and difficulties here. Especially the then controversial British Prime Minister in reading the spirit of his people and remaining loyal to him, even lying, ultimately conquering him.
Hard task, less than that touched the London actor, which here offers a test for which the well-informed already assign him the next Oscar. A gamble, it seems, was to entrust such an iconic figure to a face that is equally well known and able to overpower the worn mask . An obvious problem since the first scenes, but that the skill of the interpreter and the choices of directing and make up (two hundred hours overall, over the entire duration of the work, those necessary for the trick of Oldman, heavy but not oppressive) make you forget, as the character grows.
And while Oldman becomes his Churchill, he takes the form of speaking and moving, even the film is transformed. From the initial shooting of the Nazi advance and the clashes in the House of Lords - similarly observed from above - to the entry into the scene of our protagonist. Initially a gruff and sulky "piggy", dressed in pink and beloved by his wife Clementine (a Kristin Scott Thomas too devoted to his role and reason of state), feared by his own king and constantly on the brink of the abyss. Like Great Britain and all of Europe, on the other hand.
We are facing a crescendo, as it is easy to guess. A continuous discovery, which develops while the camera revolves around him, follows him, through corridors and closed rooms, to which he gives dynamism, suddenly opening them, withdrawing, discreet but omnipresent and revealing like the butlers of the best English tradition. A ' attention and a photograph that, perhaps not constantly and with sufficient balance, accompany us' safely' to the end. Alternating with the show put on stage.
That in some moments takes away tension from the drama of the story, lightening it, but that humanizing the observed subject ends up dragging us into the heart of his dilemma. And these are the most engaging moments, although one of the most important moments in Modern History and of our continent is taking shape: When we see him hypnotized in front of the BBC's red light, which symbolically opens the next turn, or in his last meeting with King George VI, finally at his side, but above all in the final crowd bath, on his journey to Westminster on the District Line, a very appreciated and touching license in a plant that for the rest prefers a certain theatricality.
The darkest hour, in the room from 18 January 2018, is distributed by Universal Pictures.