Friday, December 10, 2010

Unfairly, walking in to Tom Hopper’s The King’s Speech, I expected to hate it. Immensely. In my mind, it seems just the sort of Hollywood (British or not) fare that gains traction post-festival season, and is ballooned to the top by a charmingly silly, yet bottom-line serious, take on a historical event or an historical figure. In the case of The King’s Speech King George VI’s (Colin Firth) vehement stutter and the relationship it helped to foster between Bertie (King George’s childhood nickname) and Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a talented though unorthodox speech therapist. Sounds like a quirky set-up with a great cast but in the end, it just sounds like Oscar bait hub-bub. The kind of dime-a-dozen period pieces that always clog the projectors this time of the year, the same kind that I go out of my way to avoid. Yet, because of its talented cast and burgeoning directorial talent in Tom Hopper, The King’s Speech rises above the usual Christmas-time dreck.

Review - The King's Speech

I’ll say this quite frankly, The King’s Speech is exactly the film the trailers make it out to be. It’s a film about an unexpected relationship and the way it deeply affects both the life and rule of a man who never wanted to be king. King George VI has a bad stutter and it makes him seem less dependable as a ruling figure. When his father dies (Michael Gambon, shortly but impressively) and his daft, American-loving brother (Guy Pierce) attempts to marry a divorced woman, the potential for kingship becomes inevitable, and Georgie must deal come to terms with his debilitating stutter. It could be a children’s book, a simple parable about differences and how we address them, but instead because of a finely written script and two outstanding performances by Firth and Rush, it becomes a keen character study. Firth plays Bertie as a child who was never given the chance to grow up. A man trapped within the stuffy, tight parameters of a royalty, who has been eviscerated by the daunting insecurities passed along to him. In Rush’s Lionel Logue he finds not only a man able to stand up to the all-encompassing wall of royal pressure, but someone who he feels comfortable with. A "friend" unlike any he has ever had. And the film thrives when these two actors are on screen together. The moments where Logue attempts to break down Bertie’s stutter are enjoyable in a silly way, and beautifully (as the entire film is) portrayed by Hopper. When the two men are separate, the film’s formulaic script (we all know that Bertie becomes king and that his speech turns out just fine) bubbles to the surface, and though it’s still enjoyable it doesn’t have the sparkle the other scenes downright gleam with.

Firth’s portrayal of Bertie is near brilliant, further singling him as one of the great British actors of his time. His ability to maintain Bertie’s subtle accent throughout rage, sadness, happiness, and fear is so impressive, it washes away the film’s less adequate parts. I almost wished for him to spend the credits reading various bits of literature, just to showcase how amazing his talent was.

Don’t expect surprises from The King’s Speech, there are very few here, but certainly expect a beautifully crafted film that thrums with the sheer talent of it’s two male leads.

 

Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and the KEXP blog.  He also has his own Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.   If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his writings here at Side One: Track One then please do so here.

- Noah Sanders -



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