Churchill (PG)

A BRITISH prime minister under intense pressure, their ability in question, the future of Europe hanging in the balance. No, this film isn’t about Theresa May, but a premier of a somewhat higher calibre. Nonetheless, its timing as a reflection on the pressures and responsibilities of power – and the foibles of those who exercise it – couldn’t be more piquant.

Fans of Netflix’s The Crown have been watching Winston Churchill during his second term as prime minister, in the 1950s. The perception is that by that time the 70-something Churchill was well past his prime, using all his guile simply to cling to power. What’s immediately surprising about this film is that, despite its focus on the iconic leader who famously steered Britain through the Second World War, he is also shown to be weakened, isolated, riddled by doubt. And that’s what makes it so compelling.

It’s set in June 1944, just a few days before the Allies’ proposed D-Day landings, the make-or-break attempt to force the Nazis out of France and change the course of the war. The generals Eisenhower and Montgomery are in the driving seat, waiting only on the weather. But rather than backing them, and stirring the troops to action, Churchill (Brian Cox) is desperately trying to avert what he calls a “broken plan” that he believes risks the slaughter of thousands of men.

This isn’t a prime minister at the forefront of a bold course to win the war, but a man beset by demons (we first see him imagining the shoreline awash with blood) and surplus to requirements. Rather than command, he is trying to sabotage, while those closest try to rein him in, including his long-suffering wife Clemmie (Miranda Richardson).

Screenwriter and historian Alex von Tunzelmann says that she has tinkered with the timeline to make it more dramatic, yet been true both to Churchill’s objections to Operation Market Garden and its chief reason: the fear of repeating his own past mistake in green-lighting a similar offensive during the First World War, when more than 500,000 soldiers were killed on the beaches of Gallipoli.

The writer has also tapped into Churchill’s bouts of heavy depression, and the ego of an extremely complicated, powerful man as he suddenly feels powerless – not least when Eisenhower (Mad Men’s Jon Slattery) and the King (James Purefoy)

block his daft desire to sail to Normandy with the troops.

When this inspirational “British bulldog” asks his wife, “What will I be, when I am no longer fighting?” it is positively Shakespearean. And the fact that Cox is an accomplished Shakespearean actor, who has played Lear, isn’t lost in this performance. His Churchill is at turns bullish and pathetic, cunning and cantankerous, self-obsessed yet deeply, painfully aware of his responsibilities.

A number of great actors have played Churchill, including John Lithgow in The Crown, but the Scot easily joins their ranks. In his hands the PM’s journey towards reconciliation with the invasion is very moving and, as no doubt at the time, inspiring.

Richardson gives a typically doughty turn as the woman who has to hold things together in Churchill’s office while her husband loses it. “Why do I need a new secretary?” he blasts. “Because you ate the last one,” comes her stoic reply. Later she will give hubby a slap that it’s possible to feel in the auditorium.

Director Jonathan Teplitzky’s last film, The Railway Man, was also a Second World War tale, in that case charting a real-life Edinburgh’s man’s traumatic experiences in a Japanese prison camp. Like that film, Churchill has its heavy-handed moments; also like that film, the story and the actors carry the day.

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