The King's Speech
I saw last night. Colin Firth as King George VI and the true story of how he tried to overcome his stammer by working with an unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue played by Geoffrey Rush.Ìý
There's a lot of talk around this film at the moment, especially for a fairly small budget film which looks like it's going to storm the Baftas, Golden Globes and then the Oscars.
Firth deserves all the nominations he has got and there has to be an Oscar for him this year. He captures the stammer, the frustration, the anger, the child hood demons of a man who finds himself voiceless in a new radio age - and someone who was never expected to be King.
But after the abdication of his older brother Edward VIII (played brilliantly by Guy Pearce), "Bertie" as he's known to his family not only finds himself King of England but Head of State as his country goes into war with Germany.
The drama of this story is immense - Hitler, news reels of the Nuremberg Rallies, Edward and Mrs Simpson, his abdication, political upheaval in the British Government (it's not often Stanley Baldwin gets his moment in the sun) and at the heart of it the changing media age. Microphones loom throughout this film, a malign presence, an invasion of personal space, especially Buckingham Palace. Now even monarchs are forced, as Michael Gambon as King George V says "to be actors". The House of Windsor finds itself struggling to be relevant.
All that aside as fairly powerful film material, at the heart of the story is one man's battle to overcome a crippling social disability, a stammer. Ìý
I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did, and even though that first war time speech of George VI can be heard , the speech stilted, the stammer never far from overcoming the King, Firth's performance takes us behind the scenes in a way no history book can ever do.Ìý
I'm a huge fan of Colin Firth (raging he didn't get the Oscar for Best Actor for "A Single Man" last year) but as he walked towards the monstrous looking microphone I was scrunched down in my seat barely able to look at the screen, dreading what he was having to do.
By the end of the 6 minute speech, with Geoffrey Rush almost conducting every word (including a few mouthed swear words and stunning use of the 2nd movement from Beethoven's 7th Symphony) I was nearly on my feet rooting for him in a way I never imagined I would for a monarch!
It's interesting that Firth's portrayal of George V is similar to Helen Mirren's portrayal of his daughter Queen Elizabeth II inÌý"The Queen". Both are restrained performances that afford a sense of intimacy with a monarch.
It seems a far cry from the 1990's American mini series about the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Di, or the daily tabloid headlines about Royal scandals, or the 1997 Kitty Kelley book "The Royals" which washed dirty linen with great gusto in a door stopper of a biography. Ìý
It seems as though society is in a different phase where film makers want to reflect the British Royal Family at moments of crisis, but ones which they overcome, their weakest moments becoming their finest hours.Ìý
With the Royal wedding of another future King, Prince William to Kate Middleton in April, it seems the House of Windsor has never had a better PR. Ìý
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