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Review - The King's Speech
Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue's diary, discovered by his grandson, and entrusted to screenwriter David Seidler, is the source material for this British drama, directed by Tom Hooper ('The Damned United'). Out of respect to the wishes of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (The Queen Mother) that the contents should not be made public in her lifetime, this movie has waited 30 years to make its world premiere (in Toronto), and enjoyed a UK premiere soon afterwards at Leeds Town Hall on November 4th 2010.
Harley Street quack Logue - played with subtle irreverence by Geoffrey Rush - is approached incognito by Mrs Bowes-Lyon (Helena Bonham-Carter) to assist her husband, Albert, aka Bertie, Duke of York (Colin Firth) who has a dreadful stammer. Her action is borne of desperation, as the decreed speech therapists have failed to make progress.
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The Duke's impediment is becoming a problem due to the demands of radio, but the events of the tumultuous 1930s conspire against him to make resolving the stammer imperative to his credibility as King Of England. His father George V dies, his elder brother Peter, Edward VIII (Guy Ritchie) then abdicates to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson (Eve Best), and then Churchill (Timothy Spall) is proved correct about the intentions of Adolf Hitler when Germany invades Poland, and the country is thrown into war.
The relationship between Lionel and Bertie might be the movie's foundation, but the reason it succeeds so well is because the historical context is sufficiently developed by Seidler and Hooper to allow our sympathies towards the future king to be suitably enhanced. Bonham-Carter glues the relationship together with a confident and empathic performance. We also enjoy a cameo from Derek Jacobi, as the archbishop of Canterbury, who distrusts Logue - perhaps since he already knows a thing or two about stammering from his role in the 1970s BBC television classic 'I Claudius'.
The movie is about how friendship can blossom in the most unlikely of circumstances provided there is a mutual trust - Bertie reveals some of the episodes in his early childhood that have contributed towards his affliction, and Logue learns to employ humility in his work. Firth is completely believable in this role, revealing a furious determination. Remarkably, when the time comes for him to deliver his first war time speech, the intensity of our fears and hopes are reflected in the images of those gathered around their radio sets.
10/10 Faultless
Review written by John Franklin : November 2010
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