Say no to appeasement

My month long movie marathon ended today. Next weekend I’ll be attending the Detroit Symphony Orchestra French Festival and watching the Olympics. So it may be a while before I see another movie, though there is one more on my list. I imagine this one will stick around (it is nominated for Oscars).

Today’s movie was Darkest Hour. This is the story of Winston Churchill (wonderfully played by Gary Oldham) during May 1940 from just before he is asked to be Prime Minister to his famous “We shall fight them on the beaches...” speech given in Parliament at about the time of the Dunkirk evacuation (IMDB tells me the speech was given after the evacuation while the movie portrays it as happening during).

My favorite scene is when Churchill talks to common people in the Underground. IMDB explains that Churchill did talk to common people, but probably not in the Underground. I enjoyed the way he made the other passengers feel at ease, though I kept thinking this train is taking a really long time to get from one station to the next.

Churchill becomes Prime Minister because much of Parliament is tired of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. Even so, Churchill appoints him to his war cabinet, similar to Lincoln’s Team of Rivals. It is there Chamberlain and his protege Lord Halifax (who many thought would become Prime Minister) continue their campaign to try to get a peace deal with Hitler. This is as Belgium and France fall. Much of the movie is about Churchill concluding appeasement won’t work and that most English people didn’t want it.

In my reading and hearing about bullies, much of it from the blog Shakesville, I learned that when a bully is appeased he now knows what he can get away with and will try for more – certainly continuing what he was doing and likely upping the level of abuse. I kept waiting for Churchill to tell Chamberlain that. Didn’t happen. Though that understanding may not have been around at the time. Then again, Chamberlain would have denied it.



Since the beginning of the year I’ve seen eight movies. When I got to the sixth movie I saw that it was a portrayal of one person pulling rank (and I’ve written about ranking frequently) and another resisting. I also realized this is a frequent, perhaps nearly universal, story and movie theme going at least as far back as David and Goliath. These tales are almost always written so that our sympathies are with the resister and not with the abuser (as it should be!).

In that light, here are the movies I saw so far this year (with links to posts mentioning them):

Call Me By Your Name – There was only a bit of ranking at the end of the movie (I won’t explain more so that I won’t spoil it – this one is worth seeing).

Bombshell – Hedy Lamarr had a hard time in Hollywood because she refused to fit the mold the studios tried to force her into. She resisted the ranking.

Coco – Miguel experiences some ranking from his grandmother who bans music from her life because her musician grandfather left the family. He experiences more of it from a famous musician who tried to rank himself above others.

Wonder – Because Auggie is disfigured he is pushed to the bottom of the social hierarchy. With resistance and a winning personality he breaks the hierarchy.

Tom of Finland – Because Tom is gay he is assaulted and learns to be careful. He eventually finds a community that values him for who he is and what he can do.

Shape of Water – The lowly cleaning woman defies the nasty boss.

The Last Jedi – Resistance of ranking is the whole story. One side wants galaxy domination and the other is doing all it can to keep that from happening.

Darkest Hour – The British resolving to resist Nazis.

Yes, ranking is a part of eight out of eight movies. In some it intrudes only a little bit. In others ranking and resistance to it is the whole story.