Darkest Hour feels like a classic Best Picture winner. It absolutely shouldn’t win. (2025)

Each year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences nominates between five and 10 movies to compete for Best Picture trophy at the Oscars — its most prestigious award, and the one given out at the very end of the night. What “best picture” really means is a little fuzzy, but the most accurate way of characterizing it might be that it indicates how Hollywood wants to remember the past year in film.

The Best Picture winner, in other words, is the movie that represents the film industry in America, what it’s capable of, and how it sees itself at a specific point in time.

So when we look at the nominee slate for any given year, we’re essentially looking at a list of possibilities for the way Hollywood will ultimately characterize the previous 12 months in film. And one thing that’s definitely true about the nine Best Picture nominees from 2017 is that they exhibit a lot of variety.

There are genre films and art films, horror films and history films, romances and tragicomedies. And thinking about what the Academy voters — as well as audiences and critics — found enticing about them helps us better understand both Hollywood and what we were looking for at the movies more broadly this year.

In the runup to the Oscars, Vox’s culture staff decided to take a look at each of the nine Best Picture nominees in turn. What made this film appealing to Academy voters? What makes it emblematic of the year? And should it win?

In this installment, we discuss Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour, a historical drama about Winston Churchill as he assumes the position of prime minister and grapples with some of the most difficult decisions in his time as leader. As Churchill, Gary Oldman is almost guaranteed the Best Actor Oscar — but the movie is more of a wild card. And for many people, it’s a controversial one too.

Alissa Wilkinson: I have to admit this up front: Darkest Hour is my least favorite of the Best Picture nominees. There’s nothing incredibly wrong with it — it’s a competently made drama with many of director Joe Wright’s signature flourishes, like sweeping shots and stirring, emotional scenes. I enjoyed some pieces of it very much, especially the relationship between Churchill and his wife (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) and Ben Mendelsohn, as the king, sitting and looking askance at a day-drinking, disheveled Churchill.

But I’ve seen the film twice now. The first time, I was kind of ... bored. The second time, I was a little annoyed, partly because I’d discovered how much of the history in the film was invented. Not that movies can’t invent history — they do it all the time, and that’s partly the fun of it — but some of the most pivotal scenes in the film are entirely imagined, and that seems to me to undermine the whole film’s point about myth-spinning and truth-telling, especially during times of crisis. (I wrote as much in my review.)

So what do you think of Darkest Hour? And why do you think it earned the respect of the Academy voters enough to garner a nomination for Best Picture?

Emily VanDerWerff: Darkest Hour is my least favorite of the Best Picture nominees too, which is too bad, because I generally like director Joe Wright, and I think the first two-thirds of the movie is pretty entertaining. I’d never vote for them for Best Picture, but I had a good time watching them, more or less.

The internal machinations of the British political machine as it attempted to confront the existential threat of Nazi Germany make for surprisingly riveting stuff, and I love how Wright barely drops in on the war raging an English Channel away. The occasional cuts to a camera drifting far above a battlefield, from a God’s-eye viewpoint, help hammer home one of the movie’s sneaky themes about how Churchill was gambling with the lives of men he couldn’t quite imagine as real people, lest he freeze up.

But the movie’s final third ultimately lets it down, sending Churchill into the London Underground to talk to subway passengers about whether they’d like the British to keep fighting or ultimately enter peace talks with Hitler. It’s a scene that strains credulity in multiple ways (Really? No one on this train wants to negotiate?), but what really sends the movie off the rails is its descent into mawkishness. When it gives the final word to a small child, I very nearly lost it.

And Darkest Hour doesn’t recover from there. The evacuation of Dunkirk — a moment that within the context of the movie should have vindicated Churchill at least somewhat — is mostly relegated to a footnote, and everything that follows (including the famous “we shall never surrender” speech) feels weirdly perfunctory, centered on conflicts I never quite bought.

The final third of the movie hammered home just how little I cared about anybody onscreen who wasn’t Churchill. Lily James is there as his secretary Elizabeth Layton, but I couldn’t tell you why. Even Neville Chamberlain and Halifax, ostensibly the movie’s antagonists for their desire to negotiate with Hitler and unwillingness to back Churchill, ultimately function only in their relation to Churchill. The movie isn’t full of real people; it’s full of historical figures who have opinions on Winston Churchill, and that’s their ultimate use to the story.

This could maybe have worked if the movie had tried to tell us anything about Churchill beyond, “He gave some great speeches and maybe had a moment of self-doubt once or twice.” That’s why my favorite scene in the movie, the one that points the most toward a film that could have worked very well indeed, involves Churchill’s private call to Franklin D. Roosevelt, begging for money or assistance or anything. The desperation climbs off the screen, and it finally makes the movie feel like something more than a hagiography.

I think these sorts of biopic are best when they concentrate on a dramatic few weeks in the life of a historical figure (see also: Capote and Lincoln, both terrific movies that find time to sketch in characters other than their titular ones), and theoretically, Darkest Hour should fit that bill. But the movie seems less interested in Churchill as anything other than a vehicle to win somebody an Oscar, and that destroys it.

Jane Coaston: I’ll admit it: I’m a historical pedant, especially regarding World War II (a subject on which I wrote my college honors thesis and one I think about quite a lot). And in Darkest Hour, there are numerous scenes that I know the reasoning for but are so incredible — as in, “not believable” — that I found myself entirely distracted.

In one scene, Churchill takes Lily James’s character into the Map Room (where no women are permitted) and basically explains the situation at Dunkirk to her. Why? For reasons.

And as Emily mentioned, the scene in the Underground was so anachronistic and unnecessary — and yet entirely necessary, because the film would have you believe that Britain’s decision not to open negotiations with Hitler was entirely based on a train car full of ultra-reasonable British people (and not on the fact that there were never really terms to negotiate in the first place).

And as Emily said, Dunkirk, in this film, becomes a footnote to a story intended to show Churchill’s temerity. Which could have been done — without relying on fiction.

Alissa: I am not a historical pedant in the least (and less knowledgeable about the particulars than I probably ought to be). And I usually roll my eyes at those articles that purport to explain what a movie “gets wrong” about its subject. In the case of Darkest Hour, though, I felt like the ways the movie plays with history undercut its main thrust. A theme throughout the film is whether it’s okay to fudge the truth in order to encourage citizens in times of distress (and Churchill in fact does this in the film in a radio address to the nation).

That Darkest Hour turns around and tries to be so obviously and uncritically inspirational makes this extra frustrating to me. So is its point, in a sense, that yes — sometimes you have to lie to people in service of a greater good?

I suppose people make that argument all the time. But it makes me specifically uncomfortable in a movie from 2017, in which being lied to by your government in service of “good” takes on entirely new shades of meaning. And I think that’s true on both sides of the Atlantic.

As Emily says, this all doesn’t really matter for the movie’s Oscar chances, and it was clearly the role intended to get Oldman an Oscar. But what do you two think? Is there something about this film’s take on the truth that makes it more — or maybe less — appealing in the year it came out?

Emily: When I’ve talked to fans of this movie within the industry, or even read positive reviews of it, there’s a subtle anti-Donald Trump theme running throughout their thoughts. The idea is that this is a movie about a real leader and about the qualities of effective leadership that Trump couldn’t dream of approaching.

But as you argue persuasively, Alissa, the movie is essentially on the side of telling people what they want to hear, as opposed to what’s actually happening. It’s a movie about how being an effective leader sometimes means lying to people in order to prop up your own regime, because the alternative is even worse.

While I get that this worked out for Churchill and/or the anti-Nazi forces throughout the world, I also have trouble escaping the thought that this is almost exactly the argument many conservatives and Republicans used in order to hold their noses and vote for Trump in 2016, lest we forget the famous “Flight 93 memo,” which argued that voting for Hillary Clinton was akin to, uh, leaving United Flight 93 in the hands of terrorist hijackers on 9/11. And Darkest Hour advances a similar argument uncritically.

If Darkest Hour were slightly more deft, it would find a way to examine these contradictions. Is it okay to lie to the people when your foe is one of the worst men who ever lived? What about when your foe is just mealy-mouthed Neville Chamberlain? What about if your foe is just a member of a political party you don’t like?

Conservative worship of Churchill, after all, plugged along at a fever pitch in the immediate wake of 9/11 because he reduced all conflicts to “good versus evil.” That’s an approach that works when you’re trying to take down Adolf Hitler, but it’s less successful in almost every other situation.

Wright’s filmmaking almost accomplishes this examination several times — especially when it underlines the lonely isolation of Churchill. I keep coming back to that shot of him on the phone with FDR, which is framed as a single beam of light isolating his figure in a vast sea of darkness. It has the effect of making him seem like he’s the background wallpaper on a phone screen, which further enhances the sense of loneliness. But the script lets down the direction, over and over again.

I kept thinking of The Crown’s portrayal of Churchill as a vainglorious old man whose feelings had to be propped up at all times in order for Queen Elizabeth II to navigate the complicated world she found herself thrust into. I get that that series takes place in the 1950s, but it’s also more interested in questions of nuance and contradiction than Darkest Hour is. By turning Churchill into the seventh-grade world history version of himself, Darkest Hour becomes emptier by the moment. (In case you couldn’t tell, talking about this movie with the both of you is making me like it less, which is rare for me.)

Jane: Here’s my view: There’s a film to be made about Churchill. It could even be made starring the same actors and characters. But it shouldn’t have been this one, written like this, framed like this.

Alissa: Whatever else we might say about Darkest Hour, it’s impossible to forget some of its images and moments, which are cinematically stirring in a way that Joe Wright does incredibly well. So in five or 10 years, what idea, image, or scene from Darkest Hour will stick with you? What will you think of when someone mentions this movie?

Emily: I’ve talked about the God’s-eye view of the battles and the scene with the phone call already, so let me just say that I found the final image of the movie, papers raining down on a triumphant Churchill, to be the best possible version of movie hagiography. “Here is a great man!” it insists, and I almost went with it.

Jane: If you treat this film like fiction, and Churchill as a fictional character, this film is gorgeous and good.

Alissa: My favorite scene in the film is between Churchill and King George (played by Ben Mendelsohn), who have been eyeing each other warily the whole movie — Churchill because he’s not sure the king likes him, and the king because he, well, doesn’t like him. But on the eve of a key moment, George arrives in the middle of the night to Churchill’s residence, where the prime minister is having trouble sleeping, and offers a word of encouragement.

This being Darkest Hour, I have no idea if this actually happened. But as a piece of cinema, I like it a lot: It’s a small moment between two prickly characters that shows how each of them has changed, in ways that are almost imperceptible, throughout the film. And since Darkest Hour is a character-driven piece through and through, it’s a great encapsulation of the film’s larger strengths.

Check out what our critics roundtable had to say about all nine Best Picture nominees: