Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter and Guy Pearce
Directed By: Tom Hooper
Written By: David Seidler
Produced By: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin and Geoffrey Rush
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Rating: R
Running Time: Approximately 118 minutes
Website: kingsspeech.com
Budget: $15,000,000
Genre: Drama
Release Date: December 25, 2010
A film with a title like The King’s Speech instantly evokes images of stodgy, upper-class Brits sitting around lush parlors, drinking tea and trading dry witticisms while classical music plays in the background. If you think that this is that movie based on the title alone… well, you’d be right, but also incomplete in your assessment.
The speech of the title is one given by King George VI of England (Colin Firth), formerly the Duke of York, formerly Albert, second son of George V – he adopts his father’s name on taking the throne. The title refers to the 1939 radio address in which George VI declares war on Nazi Germany after the invasion of Poland, but it also refers to the way Albert/George speaks altogether. Albert, initially out of the line of succession in favor of his more hedonistic older brother, Edward (Memento’s Guy Pearce), is uncomfortable in the long shadows cast by his family and station. He suffers a pronounced stutter that makes public appearances difficult and strains his relationship with his royal kin.
All this is much to the consternation Albert’s wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), who enlists the aid of Lionel Logue, a speech therapist from Australia (routinely dismissed as a “colonist” by the English characters) called upon to discreetly rehabilitate Albert’s stammer. As Albert, whom Lionel insists on calling “Bertie,” finds himself facing a more and more certain destiny as King of England, the two men turn an adversarial doctor-patient relationship into a grudging but genuine friendship.
It’s the kind of lush period drama that aches with historical resonances and the angst of privilege, dripping with enough old-fashioned English repression to make the Jane Austen crowd swoon. Indeed, The King’s Speech is cut from the same cloth as other recent historical dramas like The Queen, recasting relatively current events as politely staged melodrama. Like The Queen, The King’s Speech lays the symbolism on thick – the Shakespearean references are to King’s what the stag was to The Queen – and offers a fleeting, speculative glimpse into an inscrutable world of wealth and isolation.
While Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth, here portrayed as a small girl, was played with a sort of icy resignation, the filmmakers of King’s are not beholden to respectful portrayals of living persons. The film does gloss over details like, say, Prince Edward’s Nazi sympathies (backed the wrong horse there, Eddie), but as a whole it plays its characters with as much depth and detail as it does its instantly resonant historical backdrop. Firth, possibly England’s most likeable actor, makes Albert as three-dimensional as a man of his station could possibly be: frustrated, loving, utterly unable to cope with the personal difficulties of which his stammer is only a symptom. Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean) gives noted eccentric Lionel equal investment, and the two actors play off each other with the skill of two seasoned professionals. Lionel offers Albert speech therapy, but what he delivers in practice is psychotherapy, and the rapport of the two actors in these roles form the spine of the film.
It’s all shot in wide angles and vacant frames by director Tom Hooper, a veteran of HBO’s “John Adams” and 2009’s The Damned United – another portrait of an English institution: soccer. Hooper’s style isn’t flashy, and it’s a smart move with a cast this overqualified. With Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon in supporting roles, there’s not a weak performance to speak of. The King’s Speech manages subtle, profound characterizations bolstered by Hooper and an ace cast willing to draw out the best of the script. The movie seems very aware of its own gravity – the weight of the monarchy and the import of historical consequence hang heavy – with small moments of lightness to keep things lively (Albert’s foul-mouthed method of coping with his impediment in one scene reminds the audience that it’s not always tea and scones for put-upon Englishmen). It’s the serious moments coupled with the warmer, more human moments that distinguish the movie from more conventional period dramas. You might just be convinced that kings are people, too.
4 Stars
