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Title: The King's Speech Director: Tom Hooper
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is only a brief scene of strong language. Recommended for ages 13 and up. |
There is a scene early in “The King's Speech” where a woman named Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) asks a speech therapist named Lionel (Geoffrey Rush) if he can help her stammering husband out. He’s required to speak publicly but can't. Lionel recommends he finds different work. She says “he can’t, he’s the Duke of Yale.” Yeah, that sort of is a dilemma. I can see the issue. I dislike crowds and lots of noise, yet I work at a place where this is everywhere in abundance. But never mind. This man would eventually become King George VI (Colin Firth), and history would know him as a man who gave good motivational speeches and was the first major leader to publically oppose Hitler.
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How did he do it? When we first see Berty (as his friends and family call him) he can barely get a word out. Telling a bedtime story to his daughters ends up being far more difficult than it ought to be. But then he meets Lionel who manages to get him to speak. Not perfectly mind you, but better. For some reason he manages to do what all the other speech therapists could not: He gets to the heart of the matter. He see’s Berty for the person that he is, not what the public see’s him as. He see’s him not as a politician, but a man who was wounded in the past and continues to be hurt to this day. He is a man who lives royally but feels ashamed that he cannot be more for his people.
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His wife is lovingly by his side the whole time, encouraging him and being one of the few people who believes he can be more than what he claims. Let me tell you a story: I used to stutter a lot. I still do to a certain extent, but not nearly as much as I used to. I could barely make it past a sentence without stuttering, and most kids my age didn’t want to talk to me or take me seriously. It may be one of the reasons I became a bit of a recluse. Despite kicking the problem after much hard work I found myself oddly silent for years for fear that I would start stuttering again. It was about this time I found my passion for writing reviews, for reviews were a good way to share my thoughts with people without that annoying stutter.
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To say that this movie captures perfectly what it feels like to want to speak but have the inability to do so would be an understatement. When Berty goes to the microphone to share a speech with the world, speaking every word as if he was trying his hardest not to screw up...oh yeah, high school speech all over again. His performance is first rate. In fact, ALL the performances here are first rat!. Firth is likely to win Best Actor at the Oscars this year and his co-stars are shoe in’s for nominations. Geoffrey Rush shows us once again why he’s someone you want to have in your movie.
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His character could easily be a stereotype of caricature, but he plays his heart with enough heart that you know he is the genuine article. Helena Bonham Carter surprised me by how good she is. Maybe is she would stop letting her weird boyfriend put lots of white makeup on her and casting her in his (equally weird) fantasies she could have a serious film career. “The King's Speech” tells so many stories: It tells the story of a man with a stammer. It tells the story of a man who wanted to be a good actor but became a great friend. It tells the story of people who support and love someone who feels he doesn’t deserve it. It tells the story of what politics were like on the eve of a scary war.
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Yeah, it has one of those famous scenes where the therapist asks his patient to curse a lot that sort of sunk me a little (because I’ve seen it took many times), but on the whole this is a great film. It has cliches like that. But it also has sharp dialog, excellent acting, and direction that grabs you and doesn’t let go. It’s the sort of great epic that might have been made in the sixties and would have survived in the public’s eye to this day. It’s one of the best films of the year. And yes, I say all these things without stuttering a single word.
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