Brexit The Uncivil War Benedict Cumberbatch
Volition Gompertz reviews Brexit: The Uncivil War starring Benedict Cumberbatch ★★★★☆
Volition Gompertz
Arts editor
@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
This week nosotros are pulling upwardly at the crossroads where art meets politics. It's not the latest Ai Weiwei installation, or a pro-Trump tweet from Kanye, but a TV picture called Brexit: The Uncivil War, a ii-60 minutes dramatised account of how Vote Exit won the EU Referendum on 23 June 2016.
It's written past James Graham, the talented young playwright with a string of West End hits, among which is This House, his satirical accept on the Labour government of 1974-79.
Graham's piece of work has a depth that goes beyond but portraying British politics; he is questioning its foundations and structure. Then it is with Brexit: The Uncivil War, a TV film that doesn't seek to retell a familiar story, merely to ask an unfamiliar question: we know who won, but do we know how?
Benedict Cumberbatch takes centre phase, swapping his handsome-notwithstanding-nerdy Sherlock Holmes persona for his baldy-and-fifty-fifty-more-nerdy Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave'due south existent life campaign managing director and one-time special adviser to Michael Gove.
Epitome source, Getty Images
Dominic Cummings (behind Michael Gove's left shoulder) was the former education secretary'south special adviser
Image source, Channel 4/House Productions
Benedict Cumberbatch gives a compelling performance as Dominic Cummings, the leading strategist and campaign managing director of Vote Get out
Cumberbatch presents us with an intense, socially awkward, strategic mastermind with a gentle Durham accent and a penchant for hanging out in stationery cupboards at work.
He is aided and abetted by Vote Leave'southward CEO, Matthew Elliot, played past John Heffernan, as a deferential fixer in Male monarch Cummings's court.
Rory Kinnear provides the oppo in the shape of Craig Oliver, then No ten's director of communications.
There are cameos for Michael Gove (Oliver Maltman), Boris Johnson (Richard Goulding), Nigel Farage (Paul Ryan), and Arron Banks (Lee Boardman): all are no more than glib caricature impersonations, just amusing in a Spitting Paradigm-type way.
Image source, Channel 4/House Productions
John Heffernan plays Matthew Elliot, mild-mannered Vote Leave primary executive
Paradigm source, Channel 4/House Productions
Rory Kinnear plays Craig Oliver, who equally David Cameron's spin doctor, oversaw Remain's communications strategy
Image source, Channel four/House Productions
Lee Boardman portrays businessman Arron Banks, who funded the rival Brexit entrada, and worked with the and then UKIP leader, Nigel Farage (Paul Ryan)
David Cameron and George Osborne hardly characteristic at all across a 2d or two of annal footage and - in Cameron's case - as a disembodied vox on a conference call.
The motion picture is all about Cummings and how he shell the establishment he despises, while keeping Team Farage'due south alternative Leave campaign at arm's length.
There'south a face-off with the erstwhile guard Eurosceptic MPs, impromptu market research sessions in local pubs, a controversial red charabanc emblazed with the £350m-a-week NHS promise, and a park-bench meeting with a young physicist who persuades Cummings to let his data science firm to use the referendum as an experiment in digital campaigning.
And all the while at that place is the dramatic build-up to Cummings coining Vote Get out'due south campaign message -Take Dorsum Control.
Image source, Channel 4/House Productions
Cummings was one of those credited with the Take Back Command slogan and the claim that U.k. could save £350m a week past leaving the Eu
The attending the flick gives the slogan succeeds in reflecting its psychological power, and the central role it played in winning the entrada, simply it doesn't make for compelling idiot box.
The drama is delivered by Cumberbatch's portrayal of Cummings as an idealistic oddball on the mission of a lifetime. And then compelling is the actor's functioning, I took to the net to find out more most the man he plays.
I institute a YouTube video of Dominic Cummings delivering a talk to a grouping of communications professionals explaining how Vote Get out won the plebiscite.
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Information technology appears to have taken identify about a yr after the vote, during the 2017 general election.
Unlike Graham'due south Idiot box dramatisation, which volition probably exist watched by millions, fewer than i,000 people (at the time of writing) accept seen this 30-minute talk by Cummings, although information technology answers the same question with less make-up and in a fraction of the time.
I thoroughly recommend watching it before seeing Brexit: The Uncivil War (Channel 4, Monday at 21:00 GMT). It non but gives you a "from the horse's mouth" version of what happened, but too an insight into Cummings's immediate post-vote plan for Boris Johnson that is missing from the film.
Of form, it is impossible to tell the entire story in one TV movie.
Graham has chosen a specific tale to tell nigh a character non also known to the public as others involved, but who had a significant bearing on events. Given the subject field it is probable to exist contentious, but information technology is plainly well researched. Cumberbatch met Cummings and Graham credits journalist Tim Shipman and Craig Oliver - both of whom have written books on the referendum - as political consultants.
Image source, Aqueduct 4/Business firm Productions
Richard Goulding plays Boris Johnson and Oliver Maltman portrays Michael Gove, who were the public faces of the official campaign for Britain to leave the European union
The result is a very watchable Television set motion picture that has a clear structure and a well-defined plot, which falls short because it ends upwards being a slightly-besides-long biopic with an underdeveloped cast of supporting characters, rather than a revelatory edge-of-your seat political thriller that goes right down to the wire: a case perchance, of fine art declining to imitate life.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46741907
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