We can come away with superficial impressions. Was it a clear dichotomy of good vs. evil? Were the German people all bastards who needed to be eliminated or neutered in the most miserable way possible? We all have friends of German lineage today. St. Cloud MN where I went to college has a long reputation of having a German (and Catholic) populace, although in modern times a more cosmopolitan air has set in. Most of us have probably wondered: would my German friends have broken down and become evil had they existed in the mid-20th Century?
And in England, is it really fair to remember Neville Chamberlain as this spineless disgrace of a human being? I ask the latter question in a rhetorical way because I really believe "no." Many of the profound questions of history are shaded. It is not bad to want to avoid conflict, death and suffering. Winston Churchill thought he had the Nazis figured out and reasoned his country would have to pull out all stops to resist. History has surely been kind to Churchill. Keep in mind though that he was voted out of office immediately after the war.
The people who lost loved ones in the war weren't necessarily disposed to doing lots of flag-waving after it was over. They were bitter, sad and in many cases inconsolable. The mood at Memorial Day programs in the US. today is probably more fervent and upbeat than it was in the days when the war veterans were in their prime. In that earlier time, the sting of loss could easily trump the patriotism.
"Darkest Hour" is a commendable motion picture. It doesn't teach us much because we're very familiar with the story. Any actor who plays an eccentric figure out of history is guaranteed to be an Oscar contender. Churchill the man was anything but bland. His peculiarities actually seemed consistent with a doddering older person. He was the pugnacious bulldog who I guess was needed to eschew all caution and just fight the Nazi bastards.
What was in the air?
Strange clouds arrived on the horizon for the mid-20th Century, very hard to understand. Germany was once a spirited land of poets, musicians, philosophers and scientists. Along comes Hitler and it seemed nothing but evil. A German would risk his very life to protest, but surely many of those people had to feel troubled by all that was brewing around them. Didn't the Nazi regime in fact create the SS to tamp down inclinations toward "cooling it?" Didn't the SS in fact focus on keeping the German military leaders in line, lest those leaders push for an end to hostilities?
At a certain point, Hitler and his top henchmen simply had to keep fighting. They had committed so many atrocities, they couldn't live in peace again. Other world powers would come and get them. So they fought until allied planes descended on Berlin as if they were flocks of birds (to quote a description once shared for me by a Morris MN war veteran, father of one of my high school classmates).
Chamberlain talked about "peace for our time" in a quote cloaked in total infamy. Except, it's rather laudable to try to minimize conflict and death. Pity the generation of women who gave birth to sons in about the year 1920. Think of the joy that accompanied the arrival of all their sons. Could the mothers have imagined what lay ahead for their boys? So many would die, they would become mere statistics.
"Darkest Hour" was directed by Joe Wright and written by Antony McCarten. Gary Oldman had the privilege of playing the central character. At times I thought he over-acted a little in a manner that you might see in community theater. But he's getting accolades that I cannot say aren't well-deserved. We want to cheer as we see the "good guy" political players realizing there was just no alternative to all-out war. All-out war: how many of us could relate to accepting this kind of reality? We consider our German friends of today like in St. Cloud MN and wonder if in an earlier time, they'd be our mortal enemies. The CW might be they were brainwashed. Or, maybe the economic travails after World War I with hyper inflation made them irrationally desperate. Certainly they were irrational.
And we're not even touching on Japan and the Pacific, equally as horrible a reality to confront. My father served in the Navy in the Pacific theater.
Remembering Kenneth More
As a glimpse into WWII in the time before direct U.S. intervention, I really prefer the Kenneth More (actor) movie about the sinking of the Bismarck. I found that story so gripping, compelling and realistic. It prodded my emotions. We see Bismarck sinking the Hood with a loss of life so sudden and large, those deaths are rendered a mere statistic. Finally the Bismarck gets sunk thanks to outdated "swordfish" planes and their torpedoes. The relationship between the More character and his secretary is moving.
My generation of the boomers got a raft of WWII movies in the 1960s, made in a certain way. They were sanitized to an extent. We hear machine gun fire and Eddie Albert just falls into a hole, in "The Longest Day." Veterans will readily tell you that death was slower and involved protracted pain. I think most kids in the movie theater in the 1960s knew full well what the reality of war was. We realized that war movies were a sanitized fantasy presented in the spirit of cowboys and Indians movies.
Hollywood has bent over backwards since then to make amends, as it were, and show the non-sanitized misery (e.g. with "Saving Private Ryan"). I rather miss the 1960s movies. While compromising in realism, they taught us a lot about the major events and places of the war, like "Remagen" and its bridge.
A critic who carries the banner of the late great Roger Ebert, on Ebert's ghost website, makes comments that I fully agree with. Brian Tallerico took "Darkest Hour" to task in saying it's "an acting exercise weighed down by costumes, make-up and over-lighting." He added: "There's nothing new to the approach. It feels often like an obligation - a story that someone felt should be told again and a way to get a great actor his Oscar."
Thanks to our Morris Public Library for having "Darkest Hour" available to check out on DVD.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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