The Darkest Hour is Oldman's film all the way

Director Joe Wright's The Darkest House (2017) is really Gary Oldman's film, as his portrayal of Churchill is what the movie's all about, a tour de force, of course, as he's in virtually every scene and totally dominates the screen every time he appears. Of course he has all the good lines, in his public speeches, his cabinet and war-room meetings, and in his private conversations; all of the other characters are a blur or a vacuum. The movie begins w/ WC's surprise appointment as PM and follows him through his management of the Dunkirk crisis, with the UK army entrapped in France and near total collapse and defeat. There was pressure on WC to begin peace negotiations w/ Hitler, and the core of the movie is his resistance to those pressures and insistence that the UK fight "on the beaches, on the hills, etc." - in his famous oration to Parliament. The film will give you a good sense of the political forces in place at the start of the war, of how close the UK came to defeat and surrender, which would have had untold consequences across the world, and of the awesome responsibility of wartime leadership. That said, the film will not give you much sense of the personal and private Churchill or of his relationship to anyone but himself - compare The Crown, which showed very well his relationship later in life w/ QE2 and his artistic and literary side (in retirement). Some of the elements are already familiar tropes: WC's overbearing personality as he works w/ a young secretary/typist - didn't we have the same overflowing-bathtub scene in The Crown? - and the episode in which WC rides the Underground to meet "the people" - whether it's based on fact or not, I'm not sure - is handled with such clumsy earnestness that it's almost painful to watch. Yes, Academy voters tend to bestow the top acting awards on those playing either historical figures or people with disabilties - but in this case it's hard to quibble: This film is Oldman's all the way.