#Winston churchill lost masterpiece how to#

#Winston churchill lost masterpiece how to#

Which, intentionally or not, the film itself goes on to prove: From the moment Gambon’s Churchill shows signs of (spoiler!) life, it is difficult to care about anything else.įighting against his own wayward flesh, the great orator must learn how to form simple words, the world leader must regain the strength to stand while those around him push and pull. The histrionics of one dinner table rise to a pitch that borders on manipulative - even fathers who were not prime minister during a world war put work over family at the time just as many mothers, particularly of the Churchills’ class, put the needs of their husbands above their children - but Clemmie manages to ground the scene enough for it to make its point.Īs Churchill’s doctor Lord Moran (the always fine Bill Paterson) reminds her, the cost of greatness is high and usually not paid by the great themselves. The eldest children, Randolph (Matthew Macfadyen) and Diana (Tara Fitzgerald), become openly contemptuous of what they consider their father’s lifelong narcissism and their mother’s willingness to nurse it. It is only a matter of time, then, before she is pulled into the tense and silent group assembling at Chartwell, the Churchill estate.Īs the family gathers, the very real possibility of Churchill’s death forces all manner of bitter and heated encounters. Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) is a nurse so kind and skillful that other nurses come to her for advice. Meanwhile, elsewhere in London, another strong woman stirs. It’s a small and fleet scene, a preface really, but in it Duncan lends Clementine such an astonishing mix of love, fear, control and weary nerve that it creates a portrait of a marriage in a matter of moments.

Graciously yet firmly, she clears the room and quietly issues the necessary orders - call the doctor, shut the door, clear the house, don’t let the servants in - before she can say what she really wants to say: “Just hold my hand, Winston, just hold my hand.” Having already made some last-minute seating adjustments, Clemmie is the first to notice her husband’s stutter and, when he recovers to end his speech, it is she who quickly takes control. Indeed, we see Clementine Churchill (Lindsay Duncan) and their youngest daughter, Mary (Daisy Lewis), before we see Churchill himself. Subject, obviously, to physical ailment (this isn’t his first stroke), but more thematically important, also to the inevitable tension between work and family, duty and arrogance, ambition and love. Opening with the fateful night during which the still remarkable orator (Gambon) begins fumbling for words during a dinner at Downing Street, “Churchill’s Secret” immediately introduces the other larger not-secret secret of Churchill’s life: The national monument and international icon, the voice that miraculously rallied a small island nation when there was absolutely no good reason to believe it too would not succumb to German invasion, was also just a man. This small and finely wrought film is about that time. Churchill was taken to his family home in Kent where his family, doctor and a small number of advisors waited to see first if he would survive, and then if he would be able to remain prime minister. As inevitably the case when a world leader physically falters, the event was kept from the British citizenry and the world.