I have decided to temporarily forego the formality of waiting forty or fifty years for a movie to officially become a classic and report on them in time for this year's Oscars. Today, I am going to discuss The King's Speech, my favorite movie of the year. If I could get through Toy Story 3 without crying, maybe. I'll try to keep it spoiler lite but seriously, you should know how World War II ended by now. Onwards...
If you can't tell by now, I'm a little bit of an Anglophile. I always gravitate towards anything with the royal family and so, Colin Firth as the king, I am there. Let us henceforth refer to King George VI as Bertie, because I like that it reminds me of Jeeves and Wooster. Bertie is the Duke of York, the second oldest son of King George V, which by all accounts means that he's not going to be king, which really works out because Bertie has a stammer. Or a stutter. The opening sequence of the film is one of the best I've ever seen: setting up the stakes, creating tension and creating a great deal of empathy for Bertie very quickly. We see him fumble through a speech of Wembley Stadium in front of a huge crowd and worse on the radio. His wife, Elizabeth, (because I guess they didn't think THAT would get confusing) played by Helena Bonham Carter is desperate to help him and seeks out Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist in order to help him. Bertie goes to meet with Lionel and is convinced that no one can help him. So, we follow Bertie back to Christmas with his dad where we start to get the idea that Bertie's real problem is his decidedly screwed up family. Realizing that Lionel can help him, Bertie returns and starts working at curing his stammer.
In a brilliant montage, Bertie works on the stammering and this is interrupted by the coinciding crises of his father's death and his brother, Edward VIII, taking up with an American divorcee which is bad. It quickly becomes apparent that Edward is not up to the task of being king at all.
So, in the style of the bromance, Lionel tries to explain to Bertie that he can be king just as good as his brother, that he doesn't need to be afraid. Bertie doesn't want to hear it because he doesn't want to be king AT ALL and who the hell would? Even when you get to do whatever you want like on The Tudors, you're still miserable and beheading wives left and right. They break up for a while until Bertie is about to be crowned and Bertie is finally ready to understand what Lionel tried to tell him.
We follow them through the coronation and to the opening of the Second World War and everything ties together brilliantly. I really loved this movie and the elegance of the storytelling and the way director Tom Hooper was able to set the mood. Colin Firth gives an inspired performance, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter are also quite good in their roles. Rush manages to make the role of an Australian in the King's Court somehow not comical and is compelling as a man who slowly begins to realize he's playing a role in history. Bonham Carter is quite good as the slightly offbeat future Queen Mother and you really believe the chemistry between her and Firth. (You might be thinking, how hard is it to have chemistry with Colin Firth? Watch Uma Thurman fail at it in The Accidental Husband. And Helen Hunt.) Also, Guy Pearce as Edward is really great at playing a jackass. In conclusion, it is an intimate story that changes the course of global events. Some deride it as being too feel good, but I think it's struck a chord in people, wanting to believe that we can be more than we think we are. So, screw you, negative people who don't want to feel good.
In the part that's not important, I failed to notice that Jennifer Ehle played Lionel Logue's wife. Probably because they made her look really old and it would have gone like, "Mr. Darcy!" "Miss Bennet, you've aged horribly." Try to imagine some mashup of these two.
So, I'll keep you updated with some other commentary on Best Picture nominees and also some opinion on past winners.
On a completely superficial note, how much do I love this poster?
This is a great post and WORD on The King's Speech being fantastic. The ability to humanize a royal character without making him perfect or golden and glorious is quite impressive, I think. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, and would add to it that the overall design (particularly the set design in Lionel's office) was absolutely spectacular.
ReplyDeletePS- I love that Jennifer Ehle snuck in there. She's still sublimely beautiful, even as an oldie.
I loved this movie. It's easy for period pieces that are usual Oscar bait to come across as too idealized, posh, and glamorous, so much so that I really don't care about the characters, but this one had a simplicity and humility that I really admired. I got a kick out of seeing Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop, especially the scene where he's excitedly showing the newsreel to the King and his family, getting up in front of the kids and blocking their view. They ask him to sit down as if he's their grandfather. Again, just one humanizing moment out of seemingly hundreds.
ReplyDeleteWord on the set design. I was so distracted by thinking how great the fog was that it didn't even register to me how perfect the set design was.
ReplyDeleteYou know, my favorite scene that I didn't talk about because I couldn't find a clip to save my life was the scene where Bertie is telling a bedtime story to the future QE II and Margaret. It may be simplistic, but it is elegant because the story Bertie tells you is everything you need to know about him. He'd rather turn into an osprey and not have to go on royal appearances and just be left alone with his family. And Helena Bonham Carter is particularly good in this scene too because she looks worried about him, but she's trying not to let on to her family. And you get that the girls have complete love and adoration for Bertie, that this is really the only place that he's safe from ridicule.