Wars of Words

“Darkest Hour” and “The Post”

Source: IMDb: Public images Darkest Hour and The Post 2018

Watching “Darkest Hour” and “The Post” within a few days of each other made me think about the uses and power of language, one of the crowning achievements, we believe, of the human race.

We know, of course, that other species communicate complex messages among themselves — birds, chimpanzees, and humpback whales for instance — but we have not yet deciphered what they mean, much less how to carry on a cross-species conversation. Instead we congratulate ourselves on our unique ability to create diverse language systems, to invent alphabets, to inscribe records of our lives and civilizations for future generations, and to devise ever more efficient technologies of communication, e.g. the Gutenberg press, linotype, and now the endless forms of instant digital messaging.

One popular language app is called Babbel, riffing on the “babble” that describes our first attempts at speech and the biblical Tower of Babel, where the diversity of languages, frustrating inter-tribal communication, was (mythically) born. We are genetically programmed to learn how to speak but also condemned to failures of communication across cultures, nations, histories and civilizations — a linguistic Fall even more terrible than the loss of Eden.

I am stating the obvious: the use of words matters and how we manipulate or comprehend them can foster or frustrate our efforts to sustain a world in which we may all live and prosper.

As a lover of language, I was primed to appreciate “Darkest Hour,” which replays the turning point moment at which Winston Churchill rallied the heart and nerve of the English nation to oppose the Nazi invasion of Europe. Two of his most memorable speeches to Parliament frame this film: the famous “Blood, toil, tears, and sweat” peroration and his even more powerful cry to resist Hitler at all cost, concluding with the famous lines: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans…We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

“Darkest Hour” compels its viewers through the extraordinary performance by Gary Oldman, who impersonates Churchill so convincingly that I began to believe he was the man himself. Yet behind the scenes of Churchill’s personal transformation into the wartime leader of Great Britain is his humble secretary Elizabeth Layton, who transcribes his orally composed messages daily. These scenes demonstrate not only Churchill’s skill in spontaneous expression but also how great speeches get written — through continual rumination and revision.

The camera lingers on Ms. Layton’s nimble fingers, typing and retyping, sometimes ripping a page from her machine to toss it onto the floor. Those of us who grew up learning to type on manual machines will savor the way the freshly typed letters look, so forcefully struck that that they cause visible indentations on the page. The film wants us to appreciate the significance of individual words and the labor required to produce them. It also wants us to consider how the right turn of phrase can rouse us (even more effectively than rational argument) to action.

The film ends on a significant moment of dialogue. A companion of Lord Halifax, the chief proponent of making peace with Hitler, asks in bewilderment: “What just happened?” Halifax, wryly accepting his defeat, observes: “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

In the world we inhabit today, many do not think much of words — how they are delivered or how they might be arranged on the page, much less what they portend. That is the concern of humanists like myself who spend our days poring over ancient, medieval, modern and post-modern texts in ways that seem irrelevant to our market-based, technological society. If you want to get a job, so the mantra goes, don’t get a degree in the liberal arts, much less any field that focuses on language or literature.

“The Post,” which portrays a turning point moment in American history far less heroic than Churchill’s rallying cry of resistance to Hitler, is no less emotionally powerful nor less meaningful in its focus on the power of the word.

Here also, there is a loving attention to print technology. Few of us remember, much less care about, how the newspaper industry operated in the 1970s. I am so used to the ease of composition via laptop computer and related devices that I had to look this up. Linotype printing (now replaced by photo digital printing) involved the use of metal lines of type, which were entered manually by technicians — not unlike Ms. Layton — a method considerably faster than setting individual letters by hand, as the older Gutenberg method required.

Lines of type created by human hands were then transferred to machines that set them into metal frames that could be arranged sequentially for printing. The last scenes of “The Post” are devoted to a visual portrayal of the printing process. It was both a craft and an industry, involving a series of skilled operators from the point of reception from the editorial room to the newsprint product that was delivered to subscribers and to newsstands on the streets.

The chain of words, this sequence implies, like the chain of individuals who contributed to the revelation of a hidden or suppressed truth, is a wonder to behold.

From start to finish, “The Post” pays tribute to the power of the printed word — through the secret record of the Vietnam War commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, to the Xerox pages surreptitiously produced by Daniel Ellsberg, to the final newsprint copies and their national distribution. The behind-the-scenes human story of the release of the Pentagon Papers is full of drama and suspense, yet the outcome is what matters. “The Post” celebrates the power of words to change history.

Churchill’s command of the English language rallied his British compatriots to engage in a devastating conflict. The release of the Pentagon Papers helped the American people to end one.

“In the beginning was the word” is how the Gospel of John begins. “And the word was with God and the word was God.” How curious to identify God not with a state of being but with the power of the word. He/it, as many believe, created the entire universe and every form of life we know.

Maybe we should pay more attention to what we say and how we say it.

Originally published at www.psychologytoday.com.