The King’s Speech

(Movie Review)

I confess I went into this movie with some ambivalence.

Even though it had gotten good reviews (and had been recommended to me by several people) the premise of the movie just sounded really boring—a king overcoming a speech impediment didn’t strike me as the kind of story that could keep me interested for 2 hours.

Once again, however, I learn that good screenwriting and witty dialogue can make even the subtlest of stories completely engrossing.

Even though not a lot of action happens in this movie (the climax is the main character speaking into a microphone for 3 minutes) the conversations between all of the characters are all really good.
Because this film is so talky, at times I thought like I was watching a theater play transformed onto the big screen. (In fact I should look it up to see whether this movie did originally start life as a play.) But like any successful stage play, all of the talking parts have a nice flow.

This is one of those minor historical little stories that has to struggle a bit to find its place among more major stories. Potentially, what is happening in the background of this movie (the first royal abdication in British history, and the build up to the Second World War) should be more interesting than the main story (George VI struggling to master his speech impediment.) So there’s an interesting balancing act that the screenwriters have to juggle to keep their main storyline from being overwhelmed by the other plot threads.
War films we’ve had plenty of the past few years, so I didn’t mind so much that the war parts got pushed to the background.
The abdication crisis, and the soap-opera like events that lead up to it, I knew little about and would have been curious to learn more. And although the film makers did feature it as a major part of the story (in the 2nd act of the film, at least), I would have gladly sat through more.

I wonder, would this movie have been slightly improved if the abdication crisis had been given almost equal time to the speech impediment? It would have overwhelmed the main plot a bit, but then the main plot was slightly repetitive.

One of the things I hate about romance movies is that the plot sometimes seems to go in circles. The guy will win the girl’s love, then he’ll screw it up and he’ll have to win her back again, then he’ll screw it up again and have to win her back yet again, then something else will come up and they’ll temporarily break-up, and then get back together again. (Not all romance movies do this, but a lot of them do. You know which ones I’m talking about.)
This movie, although more of a bromance, did tend to follow that same pattern. There were several times when the speech therapist Lionel had to win back the King’s confidence, and by the 3rd time or so I felt a bit like we were moving in circles.

Also, some of the reviews for this film had led me to believe this film was about Lionel's "unconventional methods" to speech therapy. (Huge cliche that, but I'll let it go because it's apparently historical.) However the film was really all about the relationship between the two men, and little about Lionel's unconventional methods. There are a couple scenes, and a bit of a montage, but at the end of the film I didn't really understand what Lionel's theory of speech therapy was, and why his methods were considered so unconventional.
In fact, from the brief bit we saw of it, it looked like the methods of the King's usual speech therapists (Demosthenes' pebbles)were much more unconventional.

What else to say? Well, the acting was pretty good. It’s easy to either underact or overact this type of script, but I think the actors hit it pretty pitch perfect. They say all their lines with a bit of oomph to them, but they never really get to the point where they're overacting.

My only complaint is I thought the guy they got to do Churchill was almost doing a bit of a caricature of Churchill. But admittedly Churchill is one of those iconic figures (like Nixon or Elvis) that it’s hard to portray without veering into caricature. And fortunately Churchill only has a minor role in this movie.
In fact, while I'm on the subject, it almost seemed like Churchill was shoehorned unnecessarily into this movie. He could have been taken completely out of the movie, and I don't think anyone would have noticed. But it's like the studio said, "It's a movie about Britain leading into World War II. Even though Churchill wasn't yet prime minister at the time, we've got to put him in there somewhere. He's the only person the American audiences will actually recognize."

And on the subject of World War II:

Just about every major studio movie that comes out portrays World War II as a just and necessary war. (It’s necessary to maintain at least one good war in the public memory so we can justify future wars.)
Although that’s not the main theme of this film, and although the war is in the background not the foreground of the film, the underlying assumption is still that the war was a necessity.
This isn’t really the place to go through the whole historical record. I’m just going to state my objection to this interpretation, and say that I agree with writers like Chris Harman and Howard Zinn, who have done an excellent job of cutting through all the mythology surrounding that war.

Some more points:

* And one small historical nitpick.
At one point King George VI declares, “Without exception, every single monarch throughout history has succeeded another monarch who was dead, or nearly dead. I am the first monarch in history who has succeeded a king who is still very much alive.” (Or something like that, I’m quoting from memory.)

Despite this being phrased in a very categorical way, I think there are a number of exceptions to this. The example that springs to mind is William of Orange succeeding James II of England. (And I have a feeling that if I racked my brains long enough I could think of more. If anyone else can think of more examples feel free to put them in the comments section.)

This isn’t technically a historical inaccuracy, because it was something that the character said, and you could make the argument that the character simply got it wrong. But you would think that a king of England would be a little bit more versed in his own royal history.

* This movie got a fair amount of publicity over here in Australia because of the Australian connection. (Both the character Lionel Logue, and the actor who played him Geoffrey Rush, are Australian).
Watching the movie in a Melbourne movie theater, I can attest that the audience laughed appreciatively at all the jabs at Australia's expense thrown in this movie.

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Speaking of Melbourne, this little article in the Melbourne Age "Accusations of anti-Semitism have cast a cloud over The King's Speech" adds an interesting angle historical angle to the criticism of the film.
This is all new information to me, so I don't have any strong opinions on it. Go over and read the article and see what you think for yourself. (Rather frustratingly, the author of the article only reports that a controversy exists, and doesn't comment on the accuracy of the accusations. I guess researching it would have been too much work.)
However, if these charges are accurate, it is yet another example of what authors like Harman and Zinn have been saying all along--that much of the justification for World War II was retrofitted into history, and at the time the actual ruling classes of Britain and the United States were not very concerned about the plight of European Jews.

And on the subject of historical criticism of this movie, see also Christopher Hitchens review: "Churchill Didn't Say That"

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One last link: This article "'The King's Speech' might get a post-Oscars nominations re-edit"

This is yet more proof that:
A)--The ratings system is completely broken.
B)--The American obsession with assigning moral values to phonemic sequences is just getting ridiculous.

Link of the Day
Chomsky on Gaza MIT Jan2009

The King’s Speech: Movie Review (Scripted)