About Weaponized Words

Post 295:

            I’ve had a hankering to bandy my opinion about concerning a book or movie, but alas, I haven’t had much time lately.

            So I made time.

            Stories are the best. I hope I’m never more than a day away from hearing or watching a good story.

            So let’s delve. Just watched The Darkest Hour. Yeah, late to the party, but I actually wasn’t too keen on seeing this one, only because it seems there have been enough depictions of Churchill in recent years.

            I’ve been to the War Rooms in London, been to the Churchill Museum, read several biographies—really I’ve studied him my whole life long.

            So call me a fan.

            The movie didn’t do anything particularly great, but I thought the girl that played his secretary might’ve been the best part. To think what it would be like to type the words coming out of that man’s mind: that’s a spot in history a lot of people might be envious of.

            The film hits the usual beats, but it does touch on one thing that I really liked, and with more specificity than I expected. Churchill’s delivering one of his countless laudable speeches, and one of his political opponents recognizes that he’s used the English language as something like a weapon. Not sure if the guy said weapon. Might have been tool, or as a bastion of faith in strength of the British Empire, against all odds.

            My blog is about words, so of course this is right in my wheelhouse. I’m forever in search of the right words, and I think it’s one of those noble endeavors that most people lose sight of. We all talk and write and communicate and, most of the time, we don’t think of the power that we have.

            Churchill understood it better than anyone at the time, and I think it’s because he was a prolific writer. Not a perfect writer, but a prolific one. Most people don’t know that he was a journalist and the author of many huge books.

            So he practiced. And when the time came to galvanize a nation, he had the tools in his belt to get the job done.

            Inspiring. A movie worth watching, especially if you’re not well acquainted with the man. Though it looks like it was shot in fog. They keep putting that filter on movies now. I don’t know if they think it gives the film an aged aesthetic, but it sucks and I hate it. Stop doing that, movie people. One idiot’s opinion. All right I’m off.

            Never surrender. Cheers and see you after.