The King's Speech

Last night I went to see a film I’d been wanting to see for a long time – the much acclaimed The King’s Speech. It has got rave reviews recently in the press and so I went for myself to see if the fuss being made was justified.

The King’s Speech charts the struggle of Bertie, Duke of York (Colin Firth), who was to later become George VI – for those of you not clued up on British monarchs, he was the present queen’s father. He reigned from 1936 to 1952, and was thus monarch throughout the Second World War.

The film starts a little earlier than I expected, when the duke was still a duke and had yet to become a king – still, I hardly think “The Duke-cum-King’s Speech” would’ve sounded as good on posters. It starts off when Bertie is already married to Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother, played by Helena Bonham Carter) and is suffering from a terrible stammer, which proves crippling in his very public role of making speeches and generally being in the spotlight. To remedy the problem, his wife has taken him through all the professionals possible, before screening a bit of a maverick speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) as a last resort at his weather-beaten rooms in Harley Street.

I did wonder how the film would evolve – after all, there’s only so much therapy you can spin out for around two hours. Rather than focussing on the therapy itself, the film focuses on Bertie’s relationship with Logue, set amongst the heavy backdrop of events of the time. The film moves from Bertie as Duke of York, with his father George V still alive, through to George V’s death, through the short reign of Edward VIII, his elder brother, who then abdicates, and through the first few years of Bertie’s reign as George VI, up to the point where Britain declares war on Nazi Germany – which, at the end of the film, is where the big speech mentioned in the title occurs.

The film is in short excellent, and its acclaim is fully justified. It’s hard to judge who is the greater star of the show, for the three main characters of Bertie, Elizabeth and Logue are all played with such magnificence that each outshines the other, nay, they interlock. Even though Firth, Bonham Carter and Rush are all such famous actors, they all actually became the characters they portrayed. Firth’s portrayal of George VI was of a bad-tempered and irritable but well-meaning man who simply wants to be rid of his problem and get on with things. I found Firth’s voice particularly charming ... both he and Bonham Carter carried off with aplomb that very upper-class plum-in-the-mouth tone and manner. Bonham Carter really shone as Elizabeth ... the strong yet pleasant and snobbish and arrogant lady who, like her husband, has no qualms about pulling rank or having airs all too well suited to their station. Firth and Bonham Carter really conveyed that feeling of a couple of which he was reputed to be the shy and ill-tempered, and she the "iron fist in a velvet glove". The way they carried themselves was exquisite, polite yet haughty, dutiful yet imperious with those accents down to a Tee. Rush too, excelled as the gentle-mannered yet focussed speech therapist who on no uncertain terms was on a mission to cure his patient, royalty or not. The chemistry between Bertie and Logue and Bertie and Elizabeth was breathtaking, with Bertie’s relationship with each as intimate but as different as can be. It would not be difficult to see the Oscars being awarded to the three leads for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively.
The sets were lavish, as expected of a production with such royal subject matter, with great substitutes for the royal palaces. Everything about the film was just right – tone, pacing, dialogue, all the pauses in the right place. It was engaging without being explosive, and was entertaining without being riotous.

It was, predictably, rather stereotypically monarchist. Certain facts were emphasised or ignored according to the film’s agenda, which I suppose is understandable, and the film was designed to portray George VI and his wife in a wholly sympathetic light; the idea of a man with a huge burden of kingship thrust upon him, a burden made all the harder to bear through it being unexpected, his character and his stammer. His ill temper was not portrayed as part of his character but as a result of frustration. The idea of Elizabeth being the power behind the throne, the doting and supportive wife so completely in love with her husband – even the fact that he proposed to her twice before she said yes being explained as not through a lack of love for him, but because she too doubted whether she could hack the "burden" of royal life. In short, we are given the stock version of the characters. No Nazi appeasement mentioned on anyone's part. No racism. Haughtiness, yes, but to an amusing degree, rather than inciting dislike towards Bertie and Elizabeth. The creation really was of the Poor Little Rich Boy Just Trying to Come Good, which numerous references and obvious name-dropping to former monarchs, British monarchical history and traditions ... it was quite a walking advert for the British monarchy.

In a lot of ways it mirrors another film with a similar theme: The Madness of King George, for which Nigel Hawthorne was nominated for an Oscar. It follows much the same pattern – the king’s duty is a burdensome one, he has a dutiful and loving queen by his side, the king has a problem (in George III’s case he went mad rather than stammered), a controversial therapist is sought for ... at first the king resists, but over time builds a trusting relationship with his practitioner, just in time for the problem to be solved. In fact, the two films chronicling the woes of both George’s are so remarkably similar that I wonder if historical events and character have not been ever so slightly bended if not by Hollywood then by the ages to please audiences who like a Happy Ending. It’s all a little too convenient that both stories run parallel to each other.

The film is tipped to win Oscars, and rightly so, because the acting is amazing, but I often wonder if in part it isn’t helped along by the “royal effect”. The Madness of King George, Elizabeth, Mrs Brown, The Queen and now The King’s Speech have all pulled in their fair share of Academy Award nominations or wins – and each time for an actor or actress playing the part of a king or queen. Perhaps The King’s Speech is part of this pattern. Hollywood loves chartering royalty, and no more so than when we are allowed a glimpse into their notoriously private lives. Perhaps through these royal films we create for ourselves a reproduction of what we perceive their world to be like – a world of riches, of palaces, of riches, of privileges, the social injustice of which is tempered by the millstone of “duty” which allegedly hangs round the royal necks. Perhaps it is that craving to see the royals as humans yet dare not believe that they be so, that drives the British and Americans alike to see these films about private royal lives. With royal films there is that desire to see the trials and tribulations, the headaches and woes of crowned heads, to prove to us that no-one has it all, and that apparently even the most exalted of society rest uneasy. Perhaps with these films we are creating what we wish to see, rather than what was actually there. If you are looking for this kind of feel-good injection, a very traditional view of a monarch and his era, along with genuinely superb acting, then with The King’s Speech you can’t go wrong.