January can be a depressing month of the year; it’s still cold outside, Christmas is gone and those New Year’s resolutions have almost certainly already been smashed; but not at the cinema, where the gloomy atmosphere fades away, with numerous award ceremonies quickly approaching, it is a time for ambitious films to be released, and The King’s Speech is certainly one of these films; serious in subject matter, yet entertaining enough to draw in large crowds at the box office; and with 12 Oscar nominations, it’s this year’s big British hope.
The film is about King George VI (Colin Firth, Love Actually) and his struggle to overcome the dreadful stammer by which he has been plagued for most of his life. George VI was second in line to the throne until 1936, behind his elder brother Edward VIII (played by Guy Pearce of Memento fame, a.k.a Mike from Neighbours); who was then intent on marrying an American divorcée (thus ruling himself out of his position on the throne). Albert Frederick Arthur George (or Bertie, as he is nicknamed by his family; because of his terrible speech impediment) doesn’t inspire the confidence of those around him, let alone the British public, and finds that the more pressure he finds himself under to perform Royal duties, the worse his stammer seems to become; to the point it seems like he too will be unable to perform his duties as King, because his stammer is such a monumental hindrance.
Bertie’s loving wife, Queen Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter, Fight Club) enlists the help of unorthodox Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, (Geoffrey Rush, Pirates of the Caribbean) to try to cure her husband, and central to the narrative is the awkward relationship between Logue and Bertie; which gradually turns into a truly touching friendship.
While telling the story of Logue trying to cure Bertie of his stammer, the film takes us through a troubled time in recent British history and the audience is given a perceived insider’s perspective on the abdication crisis, the death of King George V, and the lead up to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Much of the hype about The King’s Speech surrounds the performances of the two central actors; which is wholly justified. Colin Firth follows up last year’s Oscar nominated role in A Single Man with a masterful performance; on one level managing to convey the physical and mental pain of suffering from a speech impediment, in such a manner as to make the audience immediately sympathetic to him, whilst on another level his acting is subtle and mature enough to show the immense pressure that a member of the Royal family must endure at all times, with Bertie’s tortured existence bringing into question the rationality of the Royal family as a worthwhile institution.
If Firth’s performance is of the highest order then Geoffrey Rush’s as Lionel Logue is certainly as good, and deserving of equal recognition. Logue uses pioneering and inventive methods of rehabilitation to try and cure his patients, and his eccentric way of working is initially met with hostility by Bertie, before Logue’s persistence begins to pay off. Geoffrey Rush’s character may appear on the surface as less challenging to play than Firth’s (because he does not have to master the range of facial contortions and vocal strain that Bertie does) but this does not tell the whole story; as Logue is one of the warmest, human, and likeable characters in recent cinema; it’s he who teaches Bertie how to communicate with others, literally by coaching him on how to speak, and also by showing him the values of friendship. If The King’s Speech is a success as a film it is in large part down to Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue.
Director Tom Hooper (The Damned United) has assembled a cast that’s a who’s who of current British acting talent; Helena Bonham Carter is excellent as the long-suffering and devoted Queen Elizabeth (stealing some scenes with some genuine laugh-out-loud one-liners), Michael Gambon (Layer Cake) plays King George V with predictable authority and gusto, Guy Pearce does well in a difficult role having to portray King Edward VIII as being vacuous and insipid; but the only character in the film which doesn’t work is Winston Churchill (played by Enchanted’s Timothy Spall), as thanks to his ludicrously over the top grunting and cigar munching Churchill becomes a throwaway gag that barely provides the audience with a quick smirk.
There aren’t many downsides to The King’s Speech, but one unfair criticism of the film is that it is a glorious celebration of the monarchy and traditional royal values, whereas it’s actually about the real human issue of how we communicate with one another. By focusing on the lives of the Royal family it’s only a representation of what it was like to be part of the upper echelons of British society and forgets the rest of us; this is excusable however, as the actors’ performances are of such high quality, and the world is so immersive, that the film becomes quite simply about real human issues; how we communicate with one another and how we deal with the expectations of others. Furthermore, it is only through his friendship with a colonial subject (Australia still remains a colony after all) that Bertie begins to overcome his problems, this is a much deeper comment on the extent to which Britain relied on its colonies.
One final thought is that The King’s Speech is what is termed an ‘Oscar-baiter’, meaning that it’s made uniquely from the point of view of giving the Academy Award judges what they want, and all the features of a typical ‘Oscar-baiter’ are present; including using The Royal family as a subject matter (which usually grabs the attention of American critics; as evident with Stephen Frears’ Oscar winning The Queen), featuring a Royal having a relationship with a commoner (not Kate Middleton), which is another tried and tested route to a seat at the Academy Awards (as the success of Mrs Brown proved); and one does receive the impression that certain scenes are in the film simply to give U.S audiences what they expect from a British film: relentless tea-drinking, rain and drizzle, people with good postures looking regal in large homes, and, of course, the mythical stiff upper lip.
It helps to be pragmatic with this kind of criticism and bear in mind that filmmaking, for better or worse, is a business. It’s true that The King’s Speech isn’t the most adventurous film in terms of overarching themes, and it remains fairly uninventive when it comes to cinematography, but its 12 Oscar nominations and impressive performance at the worldwide box-office will hopefully make a large amount of money that can support the ailing parts of the U.K film industry. This is Britain’s big worldwide hit this year, and the more Oscars it wins the better.
