Churchill's Secret (2016)

Perfect cast and a good story

Admirable film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

In the summer of 1953 Churchill (Michael Gambon) suffered a stroke. With Anthony Eden (Alex Jennings) in the US having a gall bladder operation (outpatient surgery today) it was decided to hide his ailment from the press, the world , and the opposition party. The film also looks at Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) a fictional nurse who has headed to Australia with her fiance to "put his dreams before mine." The dry martini family is called home and their bickering continue.The performances were outstanding. The theme of the film was to show us how the dreams and aspirations of great people affect the lives of everyone around them. As stated, "There is a price to pay for greatness, but the great seldom pay it." We see the price his family had to pay, and "the rock" his wife had to be to stand by his side, realizing that it was all about him.The fictional and slightly anachronistic nurse, a woman who (plot spoiler) follows her own dreams was placed there as an alternative to living your life for your own dreams instead of your spouse as Lady Churchill (Lindsay Duncan) gallantly did.

Settling down for a nostalgic immersion in a post war period drama, with a martini in my hand, I was surprised to be nodding off after ten minutes or so. I now realize the potential of this movie as a sleeping pill and intend to keep it in the drug cabinet. I have recently watched too many of Michael Gambon's performances slide into apparent mordancy with dismay. A bad double episode of Downton without Maggie Smith is one way to describe this tedious rubbish. There was so much dramatic potential in the story which was routinely squandered, presumably in order to dumb it down for a broader audience. I would have thought that a two hour monologue by the late Les Dawson about his piles would have been more entertaining. Do something else. Don't waste an evening on this.

Set in 1953, Charles Sturridge's drama concentrates on one of the major political secrets of the Fifties - the stroke experienced by Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Michael Gambon), the news of which was kept from the public sphere through the machinations of his private secretary Jock Colville (Patrick Kennedy) and the powerful media barons led by Max Aitken, aka Lord Beaverbrook (Matthew Marsh).There is a good story to tell here about politics, and the concept of releasing information on a "need to know" basis, something beloved of Sir Humphrey Appleby and his fellow civil servants in YES MINISTER. Concepts of "truth" and the public interest really do not matter; so long as the wheels of government keep running in the way they have always done, then everyone is happy. It was one of the lessons of this incident that the Conservatives and their civil servants realized that they could govern without Churchill, or his deputy Sir Anthony Eden (Alex Jennings).Unfortunately this production misses just about every opportunity to reflect on past history. Instead Sturridge transforms it into a soupy family melodrama with echoes of THE KING'S SPEECH. Gambon makes a fair stab at Churchill, even though he looks nothing like the Old Man; but Lindsay Duncan, as Clemmie, looks to be impersonating Vanessa Redgrave (who memorably played the same role in THE GATHERING STORM (2002)) rather than developing a performance of her own. Although she protests a lot about her love for Winston, she seems more preoccupied with keeping her errant offspring under control, led by Randolph (Matthew Macfadyen) and Diana (Tara Fitzgerald). None of them, it seems, are very happy with their lives, and take every opportunity to voice their discontents. In the end we feel rather sorry for the old boy, not just because of his desire to continue in power, but because he has to contend with such an appalling family. Stewart Harcourt's script doesn't really know whether to sympathize with Churchill or to criticize him for his self-absorption. Great man he might have been; but he seems to have been neglectful of his family. In the end Harcourt abandons this issue and opts instead for the traditional happy ending where Churchill makes a great recovery from his illness and gives a speech to the party conference in Margate.The script is full of anachronisms; and although Sturridge makes strenuous efforts to hold our interest by using heritage film conventions such as cutaway shots of old vehicles, interior scenes with orange lights focusing on the characters' faces, and exteriors of Chartwell (where much of the production as filmed), the drama as a whole fails to come to life.If viewers want to find out more about Churchill's life from recent films, they would be better advised to dig out THE GATHERING STORM (2002) and its sequel INTO THE STORM (2009).

I have a certain familiarity with this period in British history, a time that is often disregarded as being uninteresting, but it is a fascinating story. How a man, exhausted after his war efforts, continues to run the country, despite his failing health.Hard not to draw comparisons between this and A Gathering Storm from a few years back, where the great Albert Finney played the great man.I am surprised there was mileage in this story to produce a two hour drama, but what was done, was done very well. I agree that Michael Gambon was very good, whether he was Churchill or not, I'm still not utterly convinced. Nevertheless the two hours passed briskly, and we found ourselves enjoying it.