10 Biggest Movie Tropes Of 2017
4. Prestige British Cinema Was All About Churchill Making Speeches
Seen in: Dunkirk, Churchill, Darkest Hour, Their Finest
While American awards-bait cinema tackled issues of race and sexuality in 2017, British prestige movies were stuck in the War. More specifically, they all drew on one specific aspect of it: speech-making prime minister Winston Churchill. Yes, even as John Lithgow's TV Churchill stepped aside on The Crown to be replaced by Jeremy Northam's Eden, he was also succeeded by a raft of jowly cigar chompers on the big screen.
The new face of the £5 note was a winner of a Nobel Prize in literature and single-handedly filled the portions of a dictionary of historical quotations not yet occupied by Oscar Wilde, so he obviously had a good ear for a movie-friendly soundbite. Even so, cinema goers have been spoiled for choice when it comes to structuring a movie around a Churchill speech.
Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk became the highest earning Second World War movie of all time by constructing a web of different time frames and spheres of battle on land, sea and air. This structure reflected the words of Churchill's famous "fight them on the beaches" speech made to parliament in the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation, in which he declared that "we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing strength in the air." In case the inspiration was lost on audiences, the film itself ended with the speech and news reports of it as the evacuated soldiers returned home.
Dunkirk also served as the inspiration for the altogether quieter Their Finest. Lone Scherfig's sweet and low key feminist story of turning the evacuation into a propaganda film during the Blitz takes its name from Churchill's next speech to parliament in which he used the phrase "this was their finest hour."
From finest hours to Darkest Hour, another 2017 film took its title from a phrase in another Churchill speech. While Brian Cox's eponymous turn in Churchill earlier in the year received some praise from critics, it is a completely transformed Gary Oldman who here looks set for an Oscar nod. Appropriately enough for the theme of this trope, Joe Wright's film is structured around the prime minister's important speeches.