Churchill's Secret

Michael Gambon plays Churchill. The supporting cast is filled with British actors you may have admired before without knowing their names.

[A] small and finely wrought film.

It’s clearly a challenge to keep the story from being entirely mawkish, but Stewart Harcourt manages to invest it with authentic sentiment throughout. Charles Sturridge’s direction is attentive and well paced. ... Gambon is magnificent, making us feel every second of Churchill’s frustration and fear as the stroke robs him of his ability to speak, and the metaphorical weight of aging.

Nicely crafted, and Gambon--as always--is superb, but this “Masterpiece” movie can also be turgid and lugubrious.

[Churchill's Secret is] awash in a deadening sentimentality, in addition to much received wisdom on why the children of great men go wrong. ... Churchill’s Secret has its strengths, among them the setting--the majestic Churchill family home at Chartwell--and the fine cast, in particular Mr. Gambon. For his scenes with his special nurse, Millie (Romola Garai), a wholly fictional character, he manages a faintly wicked buoyancy that is, at times, the one thing that saves them.