Tag: Churchill

Cinema is Brexit’s BFF

Posted on by victorfraga

The past 12 months saw three major British war drama hit UK cinemas to a lot of noise. All three dealt with WW2. First came Jonathan Teplitzky’s Churchill last June, then the following month Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk was released, and finally Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour – with an Oscar-baiting performance by Gary Oldman, pictured below twice – was launched last Friday in cinemas across every corner of the country.

The fact that these three films take place during WW2 isn’t the only similarity they have. These movies also have a subliminal message of tub-thumping nationalism and anti-German resentment (and, by extension, anti-European) in common, which resonates with Brexiters. In other words, while not overtly pro-Brexit, these movies instill a sense of self-righteousness and moral superiority in the British people. The analogy is quite simple: the Germans are evil, Europe is under their control and therefore we must out.

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The writing is NOT on the wall

I’m not saying Teplitzky, Nolan and Wright are rabid nationalists and everyone who worked on these films is pro-Brexit. Subliminal messages are far more nuanced, often beyond the control of the filmmaker. They are driven by a much broader historical narrative that paints British soldiers and Churchill as heroes as the Germans as plain evil. There’s a dangerous Manichaeism, which conveniently omits the dark side of Churchill and the British Empire. It’s hardly surprising Nigel Farage (pictured at the top of this article) loved Dunkirk so much, and I would hazard a guess he would also like the other two films.

Churchill was not an nice human being. He was indeed an excellent war strategist, but also a ruthless one for that matter. He is directly responsible for the deaths of three million people in the Bengal famine of 1943. Churchill was driven by nationalistic values, not by solidarity with people in gas chambers. He was similar to Hitler on many levels: he was a racist, a vocal advocate of gassing and an outspoken supporter of eugenics (he once wrote: “I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be CUT OFF and sealed up before another year has passed”, in reference to “the unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes”).

It’s also a mistake to think Churchill was pro-European and would likely be anti-Brexit (I used to think this myself, until I was challenged by one of our sharp readers). Churchill indeed believed in a United States of Europe, but he did not envisage the UK being part of it. His imperialistic values did not fit in with European unity. He once famously said: “We have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed. If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.”

All in all, our mainstream cinema lacks historical balance and perspective. The perpetual demonisation of Germans and celebration of “the greatest Briton ever” in British films has played an instrumental role in energising nationalists, thereby letting the ugly beasts of xenophobia, racism and Brexit prejudices out of the cage. And now they are out of control, and no one seems to know how to capture and lock them up again. Under the Brexit logic, Brits are celebrated as war heroes, while Europeans are denounced as ingrates.

Below are some thoughts on the three films mentioned above, and why they help to bang anti-German/European resentment and thereby stoke up the Brexit narrative:

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1. Churchill (Jonathan Teplitzky, 2017):

In terms of message, Churchill is not too different from your average BBC period drama, or a film you’d catch on the History Channel. It celebrates British superiority ad infinitum. It comes under the disguise of exposing the frail and errant side of a mighty leader, but ultimately the message is quite straight forward: “the greatest Briton of all times may have been a little shaky and moody, but he cared about our soldiers and knew how to win the War. Great lad! Britain rules!”

Churchill’s boundless altruism is also constructed in the film. He has the most profound and genuine concern for the lives of the British soldiers, and he’s even willing to make the wrong decision in order to spare human lives. The film conveniently forgets that Churchill wasn’t such a pure and kind human being, and that his altruism was highly selective.

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2. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017):

This is a movie about withdrawing from Europe, a heaven-sent analogy for frothing Brexiters. But that’s not all. It functions like a adrenaline-inducing video game or canticle, which can be easily misinterpreted. The Hans Zimmer electrifying soundtrack plays out at 140 bpm, in a tandem with your heart. Highly suggestible young people will undoubtedly leave the cinema subconsciously thinking: “wow, this is so cool. War is like a video game, what a wild ride, I want to be part of it”.

Plus there is no blood in the film, which was a conscious decision by Nolan so that he could get a PG13 certificate in the US and a 12A in the UK. These youngsters will think, again subconsciously: “war is not a bad thing at all. Worse that could happen is I will get covered in slime. I won’t get covered in blood”. That’s why a war movie should never be sanitised and made palatable to young people. These are the young people who Nigel Farage wants to recruit for his patriotic and xenophobic cause.

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3. Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2018):

According to this film, Churchill was a solo male figure who, in spite of his fellow parliamentarians’ doubts, stood up against a ruthless German superpower to guarantee Britain’s sovereignty. He even got a popular plebiscite mandate in an imaginary Underground sequence. Ever since the July 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK has faced an onslaught of modern Britain’s most idolised political hero. From polymer £5 notes to Churchill and Darkest Hour, there’s a creeping feeling that we’re gearing up for an epic battle.

It would be far more timely to examine Churchill’s flaws alongside his famed achievements. This is a man who spent his early political career opening concentration camps in sub-Saharan Africa, sending Black and Tan thugs after Irish Catholic civilians and advocating the use of chemical warfare against Kurdish revolutionaries in colonial Mesopotamia. This is a leader who clung onto the dying dregs of the British Empire for so long that he called for the death of Mahatma Gandhi and allowed 3 million people to starve in the 1943 Bengal famine. Is this really the sort of political legacy that 21st century post-Brexit Britain aspires to?

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Note: Richard Greenhill contributed to this piece.

Darkest Hour

Posted on by victorfraga

The year is 1940 and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s (Ronald Pickup) pro-appeasement government is in fractured disarray. Chamberlain’s position is untenable and although Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) is his preferred successor, the controversial hawkish boor Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) has better cross-party appeal. Occupying Nazi forces are swiftly making their way across Western Europe and it’s up to Churchill to guide Britain through a pivotal pair of months.

The narrative issue that plagues Darkest Hour is that it quickly becomes the story of how one man tried to make one decision, while two other men tried to make another decision. Dialogue isn’t something to be sniffed at and is certainly preferential to a WW2 film with endless CGI explosions. However, Anthony McCarten’s screenplay here is spectacularly boring. A typical segment involves Churchill suggesting to his war cabinet that Britain evacuate troops from Dunkirk, only for Chamberlain and Halifax to suggest that Britain sign a peace treaty. Heads clash, neither decision is made and 20 minutes later the same segment unfolds.

This is a real shame, because there’s plenty of potential for a backstabbing political thriller. We need only look at the work of Aaron Sorkin (from the television series The West Wing) or Beau Willimon (House of Cards) to understand how the nuts and bolts of politics can be wrought with riveting writing. This never presents itself in Darkest Hour. Instead, McCarten appears to rest on the laurels of Gary Oldman’s undeniably fantastic acting and Churchill’s undeniably mythologised character to do the interesting work for him.

Rather than writing nifty dialogue that drips with political intrigue, McCarten focuses his script on the drunken oafish orator who is so beloved by the British public. Hence the audience laughs as Churchill bellows “will you stop interrupting me while I’m interrupting you” at Halifax, which – although admittedly funny – lazily relies on the cult of personality around a man somehow admired for his objectionable wit.

McCarten has previously been criticised for his romanticised adaptation of Jane Hawkings’ memoir in The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014). This lazy relationship with the truth is on display again in Darkest Hour, as the writer scripts a fictional scene in which Churchill talks to everyday Londoners on the Underground and consequently finds fighting conviction to argue his anti-appeasement policy in the House of Commons. Churchill was an aristocrat who was known for stoking class dissent among the anarchist, labour and Suffragette movements. The invention of this scene is therefore absurd. It’s a cunning stunt worthy of the cigar-smoking man himself.

Of course, the mythologising of Churchill’s persona has significant implications for current British affairs. According to the film, he was a solo male figure who, in spite of his fellow parliamentarians’ doubts, stood up against a ruthless German superpower to guarantee Britain’s sovereignty. Indeed, he even got his popular plebiscite mandate in the imaginary Underground sequence. There’s a hint of his long-time fanboy Boris Johnson in this depiction, perhaps a David Davis style character, or even a Paul Dacre. Ever since the July 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK has faced an onslaught of modern Britain’s most idolised political hero. From polymer £5 notes to Churchill (Jonathan Teplitzky, 2017) and Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017), there’s a creeping feeling that we’re gearing up for an epic battle. Darkest Hour fits this trend perfectly, with its own brand of toxic tub-thumping nationalism.

To be clear, the performances in the film are top-notch. Prosthetics notwithstanding, Gary Oldman inhabits Churchill with dramatic dominance. Ben Mendelsohn tears Colin Firth’s (The King’s Speech, Tom Hopper, 2010) award-winning George VI crown from its perch, while Kristin Scott Thomas shines as Churchill’s long-suffering spouse. It’s just that the central conceit is terribly executed and inherently unoriginal. There’s certainly space for celebrating Churchill’s successful strategic shift in the Second World War. But does it really have to be celebrated so regularly on the brink of Brexit?

It would be far more timely to examine Churchill’s flaws alongside his famed achievements. This is a man who spent his early political career opening concentration camps in sub-Saharan Africa, sending Black and Tan thugs after Irish Catholic civilians and advocating the use of chemical warfare against Kurdish revolutionaries in colonial Mesopotamia. This is a leader who clung onto the dying dregs of the British Empire for so long that he called for the death of Mahatma Gandhi and allowed 3 million people to starve in the 1943 Bengal famine. Is this really the sort of political legacy that 21st century post-Brexit Britain aspires to?

Darkest Hour purports to show Britain’s darkest period in its mid-20th century struggle against continental European fascism. Instead, it ends up showing two dull hours that fail to accurately reflect on the many dark hours that Churchill actively embraced across his blood-stained existence.

Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour was out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 12th (2017). DMovies recommend that you trade it for the darkness of your bedroom/lounge, and for a more balanced and less romantic take on British history. Available on all major VoD platforms.

Churchill

Posted on by victorfraga

Just how strong is the “most important Briton of all times”? The unofficial accolade was bestowed upon the Prime Minister that successfully led the country through the biggest and most murderous war of all times. The title seems only fair. This must have been a superhuman, someone with qualities superior to all of us, who never hesitated at decisions, and whose instincts were faultless! Right? Obviously not, such person doesn’t exist.

The historical drama Churchill reveals a fragile and insecure side of the glorious Prime Minister of the UNited Kingdom. Under the façade of the unshakable war hero lay a human being riddled with doubts and with a body already showing strong signs of defeat: his gait wobbly, cane always in hand jaw shaky, cigar almost invariably attached to the hand and whisky within reach. His temperament was very unpredictable, anywhere from sloppy and sycophantic to tyrannical and demeaning. There’s nothing strong and stable about this prime minister. Despite being the head of government, many decisions were met without his approval, such as the go-ahead for D-Day (in fact, the entire film takes place during the days preceding the watershed event for Allies).

The movie is not dissimilar to The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd, 2011) in the sense that it portrays the fallible side of a British Prime-Minister hitherto considered indomitable and obstinate. The difference is that 2012 film does not have an underlying message of military belligerence, and it didn’t come out at a time of reactionary politics, such as now.

Brian Cox does a tremendous job delivering a man full of hope and ambition and yet infested with fear and delusion. His wife Clementine is played by Miranda Richardson (pictured above). She’s much more balanced, firm and solid than her husband, and also 11 years his junior. She is the epitome the controversial phrase “behind every great man there`s always a great woman”.

The problem is with Churchill that every one already knew this. Every person who’s even seen a image of Winston Churchill at the time would know that he was not quite the picture of health, and it’s a safe assumption that he was supported in his decision-making, and that his temper was volatile – given the enormous pressure to which he was subject. Plus the statement about the strong first lady is hardly a feminist one. Successful women don’t crave to be behind anyone.

In other words, the shortcomings of the Prime Minister, such as the fiery temperament and the alcoholism, seem justifiable by a greater purpose: guiding a winning nation through. And under the veneer of humanist film, lies a narrative of national identify tightly sewn together with military belligerence. This subliminal message is bursting at the seems and ready to pop out at any moment.

The central moments of the film are the Churchill’s dialogue and particularly the monologues, in which he expresses his desire to lead the country through the War. He has a deep concern: “what will I be when I’m not fighting?” It’s as if the mere existence of the UK was contingent on war, a view that still prevails in some conservative segments of our society. The terminology of superiority is also everywhere in the movie: courage, valour, nobility, foolhardiness and anything else you can think of in order to describe the British unshakable qualities at war.

Churchill’s boundless altruism is also constructed in the film. He has the most profound and genuine concern for the lives of the British soldiers, and he’s even willing to make the wrong decision in order to spare human lives. The film conveniently forgets that Churchill wasn’t such a pure and kind human being, and that his altruism was highly selective. This is the same Winston Churchill that played a leading role in the Partition of India, which claimed approximately one million lives just a few years. The tragic event and Churchill’s role is denounced in Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House, from earlier this year. The film also revealed that Churchill was profoundly racist, and viewed Indians as inferior, which might explain the lives of British soldiers were more valuable to him.

Churchill’s religious faith (he prays loudly with a glass of whisky in his left hand) and unwavering devotion to his monarch (it’s George VI who dissuades him from joining his forces on D-Day) were also the driving forces in his decision-making, it’s also revealed in Churchill. Hardly the values of modern Britain. I’d like to think that the decisions made by our current Prime Minister are influenced neither by the Bible nor the Queen.

In terms of message, Churchill is not too different from your average BBC period drama, or a film you’d catch on the History Channel. It celebrates British superiority ad infinitum, normally with WWII as the backdrop. This one comes under the disguise of exposing the frail and errant side of a mighty leader, but ultimately the message is quite straight forward: “the greatest Briton of all times may have been a little shaky and moody, but he cared about our soldiers and knew how to win the War. Great lad! Britain rules!”

There is absolutely nothing wrong about celebrating British achievements, and there is not doubt that the British played a noble and resilient role in defeating the Germans. Yet we need to acknowledge the other side of British history. Jeremy Corbyn stated that our children should be taught about suffering under British imperialism in school, and I couldn’t agree more. I’m not suggesting we should hate our history and ourselves. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t continue to bask in our military glory for the rest of our days without making concessions.

Ken Loach recently said about such movies in an interview with DMovies: “It’s a fake patriotism. There’s always exceptions, but by and large the traditional Sunday night television period dramas are nostalgic, like a Christmas card. People walking through snow and not getting damp.” The difference here is that Churchill walks on a beach without getting wet.

While not a badly-made movie, Churchill is not the kind of film that we need to see right now, particularly given the wave of exacerbated nationalism brought in by Brexit. Perhaps a broader film about Churchill would be more interesting, including his controversial racist tendencies and also his internationalist and pro-European views. He’s the man who once claimed that need a “United States of Europe” – I would hazard a guess that he too would be disappointed at Brexit.

Churchill is out in cinemas across the UK from Friday, June 16th. Is you go to see it, you won’t need to wear any special protective wear. There’s no chance you`re going to get dirty.