Darkest Hour: What’s in a Face?

Winston Churchill holds an iconic visage immediately recognisable to any and all Brits, regardless of generation. Thus it is understandable that in order to portray such a figure the slender and comparatively long-chinned Gary Oldman required considerably re-moulding to fit the bill of the portly Churchill in 1940. But I found this reconstruction to in fact jar with my eyes; one moment I would happily be watching a recreated Churchill and the next the light would fall in a certain way and Oldman’s distinctive eyes and brow would remind me of his presence. Now, of course, we are used to watching stars on our screens and easily suspend our disbelief casting them into any given role. However situation is slightly different, Oldman isn’t simply Oldman embodying a new character he is being partially physically altered in order to fit the iconic face of Churchil. The key word here is partially, as both ends of the scale work almost relatively seamlessly—take Serkis’ complete reconstruction as Golum or Oldman’s own Comissioner Gordon—complete reconstruction and comparatively ‘simple’ surface hair and makeup both allow us to accept what we are being shown. However this partial reconstruction radically changes only part of an actor’s visage thus creating a hybrid; we are looking both at the star and at a reconstruction.

This composite face created bizarre lapses in my vision, where I would consistently switch between watching Churchill and watching Oldman, thus straddling the line between being engrossed in the diegesis (the world of the film) and being thrown from it. Now this awareness of the construction of the diegesis is not always a problem, but it becomes a problem when it is unintended as it is here.

If we compare the face of Churchill to the rest of the cast who play historically significant roles we see a clear divide. Mendelsohn’s King George VI, Pickup’s Neville Chamberlain and James’ Elizabeth Layton all bare a good surface resemblance, while still remaining true to the actors visage. This then allows for the usual suspension of the actor as an icon in place of the character, contrasting Oldman’s Churchill. Yet another example of this, which Darkest Hour easily brings to mind, is Bruno Ganz’s Hitler in Downfall. Here Ganz receives the obligatory moustache and side parting, but one could easily argue that Ganz shares a similar facial structure to Hitler—or even argue that the hair styles themselves are so intrinsically tied to the man that anyone donning them would evoke comparison.

Regardless, the issue of unintentionally throwing the viewer in and out of the diegetic space through the partial reconstruction of an actors visage to fit a known face has truly exposed itself in Darkest Hour. But this spurs on another thought—could we handle the portrayal of a thin Churchill, a moustache-less Hitler or, to be extreme, a white Martin Luther King Jr.? The easy answer is no, as such portrayals are ‘innacurate’ if we are using history as our framework, which we can see is the framework used in both Darkest Hour and Downfall. But this is by no means a restriction we should always abide by, even if we are looking to portray historical fact. Just as a minimalist stage can create specific space, boundaries and character through careful performance, I believe we can easily remove ourselves from such reliance on realistic likeness in film—even to the extent where race and gender can be re-distributed (take a look at I’m Not There). Therefore should we be so concerned with Oldman’s likeness to and easy recognition as Churchill, especially if it comes at the expense of coherent diegesis?

Two closing thoughts:

Firstly, how tied does an actors visage come to the historical figure’s? For example can Ganz now escape the label of Hitler? When we think of Hitler does Ganz’s face also come to mind, and if so does this then create a distortive feedback with Hitler’s appearance? Will Oldman receive the same link to Churchil as Ganz has to Hitler as he required extensive facial prosthetics?

Furthermore, there is a newspaper we see in Darkest Hour baring a picture of the actual Adolf Hitler and when I saw it, due to the exact feedback above, I thought of Ganz’s Hitler. This made me wonder if I would find it out of place to see Ganz’s Hitler within this fictional space instead of the historical images of Hitler. Similarly we could extend the notion to include Colin Firth’s King George VI in many ways creating a meta-verse of the contemporary filmic representations of these historical figures, similar to those we find in superhero meta-verses (who are similarly attempting to fit into an existing framework of a character).

Obviously the comic-inspired worlds of superheroes allow for much more flexibility, but it would be a fascinating phenomenon to play the same out in a historical forum—however, if it hadn’t happened already, this would surely burn the actor into that role, irritating the exact complications mentioned above. And even if we were going to create such a meta-verse, would it still be one where we favour likeness?

Darkest Hour (2018)

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5/13

~Leo