![]() In “Brexit Mythmaking and Imperial Legacies in ‘Darkest Hour,’” Robert Knight links my review of the film, writing: I thought it a deft touch, hauntingly moving. Macaulay’s words, I wrote, were so commonly taught in British schools then that even West Indians knew them. Grown men and women told me they wept over that scene. Marcus Peters then completes the verse: “For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods.” And how can men die better, than facing fearful odds….” “Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the gate: To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. “Never surrender!” Their response brings tears to the Prime Minister’s eyes, and he begins reciting from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. ![]() ![]() After all, he tells them: “We might, if we ask very nicely, get very favorable terms from Mr. He wishes to ask “the British people” whether they should fight on or make peace. (The first was in the 1920s, when he couldn’t find his way out and had to be rescued.) He goes there as the Germans are rolling up Europe. Whom should he meet but Prime Minister Churchill ( Gary Oldman)! The scene (fiction) forms a dramatic moment in Darkest Hour, Joe Wright’s great film on Churchill in 1940.Ĭhurchill, per the movie, has entered the Underground for the second time in his life. Hopefully somebody will have a good idea, and I hope they don’t mind casting me to play her.Marcus Peters ( Adé Dee Haastrup) is a neatly dressed West Indian riding the London Underground on. “People are intrigued by her and want to know more about her. “When are they going to make a film about her?” Scott wondered. “It made the film interesting to see these really personal and intimate moments,” Thomas said, admitting it’s “frustrating” that Clementine, the force behind Churchill, has not been given the same film treatment as her husband. Wright heeded Thomas’s advice, and Scott’s scenes-in which she neutralizes her husband’s sometimes-cantankerous personality, reassures him during moments of insecurity, and reminds audiences of the sacrifices Churchill’s family made-give audiences a fuller picture of her oft-portrayed husband. Give her more of a motor, and then I might want to do it.” Make her more reactive to what’s going on. When Wright asked why Thomas was not interested in the project, the actress didn’t mince words: “I feel that should not just be at the table as the symbol of a woman in the home,” she told him. (Scott was less successful in finding another detail-Clementine’s fragrance, which the actress said would have been the perfect finishing touch: “No one could remember, which is deeply disappointing to me.”) But she had the people she liked, and the people she didn’t, and I can really relate to that.” I think that ‘Clemmie’ was somebody who was rather good at making people feel very, very small, and unimportant, and then, when she liked them, she would turn on this amazing smile, and charm, and wit, and everyone would fall in love with her. Some people are very good at making people feel comfortable, and others are very good at making people feel uncomfortable. “These are the little chinks into seeing who she really was. ![]() “I asked about how she was when she didn’t like someone,” explained Thomas. Thomas also sought out some specific details about Clementine from the people who knew her. They were both very volatile, complicated characters, which is why they’re endlessly fascinating.” They would send each other little letters in the daytime with drawings on them, with such tenderness. The other side of that coin is the amount of time they spent writing to each other. Not afraid to not speak to each other for days on end. In reading biographies, Thomas learned that Clementine and Winston “were devoted to each other but had a very stormy relationship-not afraid to have the odd yelling match.
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