Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. If it is, it must be with prescriptive rose-colored glasses. Because the past has been completed – successfully or otherwise – we tend to think of it as having been lived with a foregone conclusion. We forget that at the time, the past was the present, the outcome never assured.
“Darkest Hour” – an inspirational new film directed with subtle tension by Joe Wright (“Pride & Prejudice”) – recounts several weeks in May 1940 when England stood alone in a world on the brink of totalitarianism. It stars a soaring Gary Oldman, virtually unrecognizable, as the man who led that solitary struggle, Winston Churchill, with quietly fine support by Kristin Scott Thomas as Churchill’s wise, patient and presumably long-suffering wife, Clementine, and Ben Mendelsohn (“Bloodlines”) as the man who never wanted to be king, George VI.
Stories about great men like Churchill and, I would argue, George VI, tend to emphasize the role of leadership. And “Darkest Hour” is certainly about that. But the film is also about a quality without which leadership would not be possible – courage, which Aristotle called “the first virtue.” It may also be the most elusive.
Churchill (1874-1965) rose to power in 1940, because Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup), the British prime minister at the time, lacked the courage to take on the Nazis. Oh, maybe he honestly thought that peace at any price was better than no peace. But in hindsight – there’s that word again –one man’s peacemaking is another’s appeasement. In the film, Churchill observes that countries that go down fighting rise again, whereas those that capitulate have little chance of resurrected independence.
That may not strictly be true, but leadership isn’t just about what’s true or real. It’s about what’s possible. Churchill understood that in times of crisis in particular, you have to give people hope and a sense that you’re all in it together. And one of the ways you do that is with words – clarion-clear, soaring words. As Churchill rival Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) notes in the film, Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”
Indeed, by the time we get to that climactic speech before Parliament when he promises that “We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender,” you’re ready to take on the world through your own “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
It takes awhile to get to that moment though. Parliament may have been united initially in its choice of Churchill to lead the nation, but it was divided over his inclination to confront Adolf Hitler. George VI, as opposed to Hitler as Churchill was, was nonetheless leery of Churchill, who had supported his older brother, Edward VIII, in his abdication to marry American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson. Across the Pond, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sympathetic to the British plight but momentarily unable to move an isolationist America.
Meanwhile, the British Army – some 300,000 men – was trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, France with the Germans closing in and other British forces, quartered in nearby Calais, facing heavy bombardment as Churchill struggled to get enough civilian boats across the English Channel to rescue the troops at Dunkirk.
Churchill himself was given to black moods. He contemplated contacting Hitler’s go-between and lackey, Italy’s Benito Mussolini. But as the film’s Clementine tells her husband, he had been made strong for the fight by his inner battles, wise by doubt. In such sentiments and the film’s measured pacing, you realize that courage is not fearlessness, recklessness, bravado or machismo. It is the presence of doubt, engaged and overcome.
Churchill rides the Tube and discovers the British people are one with him. The king offers his support. Calais is lost, but England’s commercial and pleasure boats sail to Dunkirk and destiny.
And, just as Churchill predicts at the end of the “We shall fight on the beaches” speech and the movie, the rest of the Empire – including the former American colonies – would ultimately rally to his call.
No need for spoiler alerts here. We know what happened. Hindsight, you know. But present sight and foresight are often cloudy. We’re living through our own dark times, which is probably why we’re seeing films like “Darkest Hour” and “The Post” in theaters now. We get the culture we need.
The outcome is by no means assured. But the enemy has been engaged. All that is left to do is to try and, in Churchill’s words, “keep buggering on.”