We don't chose the times we live in. The only choice is how we respond.
With so many films focusing on the Second World War and Winston Churchill, it's nice to see one which looks at the story of attempting to avert the outbreak of way by Churchill's predecessor Neville Chamberlain.
The premise is that two Oxford students are trying to manage the situation as Hitler attempts to begin taking over parts of Europe and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attempts to avoid going to war. Paul von Hartmann (Jannis Niewöhner) secretly works in Germany gathering information and is given a document showing Hitler's territorial ambitions. He arranges to pass it to university peer Hugh Legat (George Mackay) who works in the prime minster's office in the hope that he can get it to Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons) and show demonstrate to him that Hitler cannot be trusted.
I thought this was a really tense film about a moment in history I had limited knowledge of. It does a good of showing the fear about the war and the drama of Chamberlain meeting with Hitler. Interestingly it's something of a revisionist take on Chamberlain who is something of a footnote in history who I'd always been taught was a naïve fool. Here he is shown as knowing exactly what he is doing, which is trying everything he possibly can to avoid another world war. It's easy to say that appeasing a monster like Hitler was wrong but I felt that if I'd have been in Chamberlain's shoes I too would have gone along the same lines and attempted to avoid war. It's arguable that delaying the war made a big difference in helping us to prepare for it.
Both leads George Mackay and Jannis Niewöhner are great here and I like the way the plot balances the fate of the world and their own personal history really nicely. The performance of the film though is undoubtedly that of Jeremy Irons, the best I've seen from the actor for some time. His Chamberlain is warm and wise, just as Prime Minsterly as most portrayals of Churchill but in a rather different way.
I really liked that this was a British/German co-production. Usually you'd expect the German scenes to be in English too but no, here they are in German and the film is pretty much 50:50 between the two languages. I found this approach to be much more authentic than the usual foreign language being spoken in English or when non-English speakers in a film only use the odd word of their native tongue.
There is one further moment in the film which I found particularly fascinating. At one point Paul finds himself alone in a room with Hitler, he has a gun on him and seriously considers using it. It's another point in the film that puts you in the shoes of the character. Presumably a fairly sizeable number of people would have had the opportunity to kill Hitler and would have wanted to but obviously it never happened. The tense scene really shows just how hard it would be to kill someone in cold blood, even if that person is Adolf Hitler. I'm sure there are people who could manage it but I suspect like Paul, I wouldn't have.
A really strong historical film which leaves some interesting thoughts to mull over.
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