I am, at heart, a bit of an Anglophile. Just a bit. I have affection particularly for British literature and I love Shakespeare, teaching a course on the Bard every spring. So, when I get to see English movies, it’s always a bit of a treat for me and if it is a movie based on some historical or literary truth about England, giving a glimpse into one of the Island’s many eras, so much the better.
I fear writing about The King’s Speech. I fear it because there is no way to do it justice with the mere words I can type here. It is, perhaps, one of the very best movies I have ever seen. It is definitely in the Top 10 of my favorites, the rarefied air of which includes films like The Godfather parts I and II, Last of the Mohicans, Seabiscuit, Citizen Kane and others.
It’s also a difficult movie to write about precisely because it is so elegantly simple. The story is all character driven, set in the years preceding WWII when King Edward VIII (known by the Windsor family as David), abdicated his throne so that he could marry a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson. His abdication set up a Constitutional crisis in England and the government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin threatened to quit if the King married.
King Edward’s abdication cleared the way for his younger brother, Albert, to ascend the throne, a choice he made reluctantly and with a great deal of fear. Albert, known as George VI, knew what was happening across the English channel in Europe. He knew that Hitler was rising and that appeasement would not work. But Albert also has many personal issues, ones that he did not talk about publicly because that is not what Royals do. Albert had a severe stammer.
Eventually, he turned to the treatment of an Australian man living in London who had a love for Shakespeare and a penchant for drama. Lionel Logue became one of George VI’s, “Bertie’s” as the family called him, closest confidants. He was present for every major speech the King ever gave and was knighted in the Victorian order.
Geoffrey Rush is masterful as Logue, a kind of classic Dickensian character who loves his family, works hard and is loyal, but is, after all, an outsider-an Australian in England during a very nationalistic time.
It is, however, Colin Firth, who mesmerizes on screen. Firth’s in-depth study (for what else could account for a stammer so natural, one expects to see Firth with one when he is interviewed about the film) of George VI-of “Bertie” is so clever, so insightful, one cannot help but watch him with all the concentration of master craftsman. He’s a reverse train-wreck-you still cannot turn your eyes away, but what you’re seeing isn’t destructive, it’s simply beautiful.
Firth looks like George VI and sounds like him and it is that sound that adds force, eloquence and elegance to his performance. He’s at first annoyed by Rush’s Logue, then intrigued, then fond of this “commoner” who had the ability to teach him to stop stammering. In one of a wealth of candid personal scenes, Bertie, still Duke of York and not yet King, admits to Logue that he’s never had any friends and never really spoken to any commoners. His devotion to his wife, one assumes, is borne not just out of Royal convenience or even of the love he very obviously had for the woman who is now Queen mother. It is because there simply is no one else he can confide in. Logue is the first man to come along, without looking for Royal favors, without pandering, to tell Bertie what he needs to hear–not what he wants to hear. “In here, I demand strict equality,” says Logue. “No titles, no Royalty. Just Bertie and Lionel.”
The mythical qualities of the story are just as important–a reluctant King who, nevertheless, does his duty for his country, knowing that his human imperfections could scuttle the entire thing. “The King can’t levy taxes, can’t form a government…” says Bertie. “What he can do is unite the country with words. And I can’t speak…” A weak England would have proved irresistible to Hitler early on. Without Bertie’s true transformation into George VI, a name suggested to him in the film by none other than Winston Churchill, he won’t have to worry about speaking English. His daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, would have to learn German soon enough.
Director Tom Hooper, who made beautiful films for the Band of Brothers series, brings much of that art to bear here. Hooper’s work on Band of Brothers used gritty reality shots of a WWII backdrop while simultaneously using close ups and unique individual shots to provide intimacy, so that it is not a wide panorama of a Nazi concentration camp we see in one B.O.B. episode, but the reaction on the faces of the American soldiers who see it for the first time. Their faces are a wealth of emotional information. Hooper lets Firth and Rush command the screen with such intimate moments, like when Logue is turned down at an audition for Richard III in a community theater.
The film is simply perfect. There is nothing like it out today, nor has there been for some time. The audience is captivated not by suspenseful moments or masterful effects, but by sheer emotional energy and raw human power that in real life, required a reluctant King to find his voice and a commoner to help him do it. What is so compelling is that one becomes aware that the historical reality that ensued is played with extraordinary and detailed mastery-and one cannot help but think that Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth are two of the finest actors who ever lived.
You are very kind. Thanks for the ego boost. Cheers!
MS