Churchill

Churchill. The stark one-word title imme­di­ate­ly brings an icon­ic image to mind. A bull­dog-like char­ac­ter rest­ing on a cane, a Hom­burg hat on his head, a cig­ar jut­ting out from his mouth, his hand raised in a vic­to­ri­ous two-fin­gered salute. It’s a fig­ure so famil­iar we might feel we know every­thing there is to know about the man already, not least because Bri­an Cox’s decent imper­son­ation is just the lat­est in a seem­ing­ly inex­haustible run of TV and film portrayals.

Direc­tor Jonathan Teplitzky makes much use of this iconog­ra­phy in Churchill, often shoot­ing Cox in pro­file or as a dis­tinc­tive sil­hou­ette, but Alex von Tunzelmann’s screen­play attempts to dig beneath the sur­face and to reveal dif­fer­ent aspects of the man dur­ing one of the turn­ing points of World War Two.

Cox’s Churchill is capri­cious, obsti­nate, prone to rages and depres­sion, and far from the hero­ic pub­lic fig­ure that led the coun­try through the Blitz four years ear­li­er. In fact, those around the Prime Min­is­ter see him as more of a thorn in their side, and a poten­tial lia­bil­i­ty with the plan­ning for Oper­a­tion Over­lord enter­ing its final stages. In the film’s open­ing scene we see the rea­son for his inde­ci­sion: as Churchill walks on the beach, the water around his feet appears to be awash with blood, a reminder of the young men who were sent to their deaths in the Great War less than 30 years earlier.

Churchill is still scarred by these loss­es and the fear of being respon­si­ble for a sim­i­lar mas­sacre is behind his hes­i­tan­cy to pro­ceed with the D‑Day land­ings, but the likes of Eisen­how­er (John Slat­tery) and Mont­gomery (Julian Wad­ham) are deter­mined to push for­ward with the plan against his objec­tions. ​“If we can just make him feel part of it,” one mil­i­tary leader sug­gests, as if he’s try­ing to pla­cate a tem­pera­men­tal toddler.

This effort to explore Churchill’s inse­cu­ri­ties and defi­cien­cies is laud­able, but the tick­ing-clock nature of the script means com­plex­i­ty is often cir­cum­vent­ed for nar­ra­tive expe­di­en­cy. Oth­er char­ac­ters in the film seem to exist sole­ly to push him towards his redemp­tive finale, such as James Purefoy’s King George VI, the one man to whom Churchill shows def­er­ence, or Ella Pur­nell as a meek sec­re­tary whose emo­tion­al out­burst rous­es him to action.

Although Teplitzky attempts a few direc­to­r­i­al flour­ish­es (such as an aggra­vat­ing habit of start­ing scenes in a blur before bring­ing the image into focus), Churchill is bland­ly effi­cient in its con­struc­tion, and the film’s clos­ing text, inform­ing us that the Allies went on to win the War and Win­ston Churchill is often regard­ed as the great­est Briton of all time, feels indica­tive of the safe, pan­der­ing tone that even­tu­al­ly envelops the picture.

The frus­trat­ing thing is that there is a much more inter­est­ing sto­ry right there under the film­mak­ers’ noses, just wait­ing to be opened up. As Winston’s wife Clemen­tine, Miran­da Richard­son superbly express­es the frus­tra­tion and weari­ness of a woman who has spent a life­time walk­ing in her husband’s shad­ow, rein­ing in his excess­es and clean­ing up his mess, and try­ing to do so with unflag­ging grace and good humour.

“I’ve learned to live around your mar­gins,” she tells him, and one won­ders if a shift of focus might have dis­tin­guished this engag­ing but ulti­mate­ly for­get­table biopic, and ele­vat­ed it into some­thing gen­uine­ly rev­e­la­to­ry. Per­haps it could have been called The Churchills?