The King's Speech... A Review of an Oscar Material Movie!

All families keep secrets: bastard children, misalliances, mistresses or mistreatments, dishonor or disease… And no one is immune, as revealed by the very moving film, The King’s Speech which brings out into the open George VI’s debilitating stammer.


The most important moment in the movie comes when “Bertie” (Albert is the first name of the man who will become King George VI) reveals that he was an abused child. Abused by his nanny, Mary Peters; humiliated by his dad and his elder brother (who will abdicate the throne for Nazi sympathizer American divorcee Wallis Simpson), his stammer comes as no surprise and a surprise nonetheless. In the 30s, the wireless broadcast communications became the new means by which politicians addressed the crowds. A stammer, a stutter, a lisp or any form of speech impediment could undo a career. How many movie stars of the early cinema whose voices were never heard had to abandon all hope of pursuing a “talking” career once cinema discovered sound?… But a King could not simply call it quits.

Edward VIII did not in fact abdicate purely for the love of Wallis Simpson. Had the woman not been such an ardent Nazi sympathizer, maybe the Cabinet and the Church of England would have closed their eyes on her twice-divorced status. After all, didn’t King Henry VIII separate from the Catholic Church to divorce and marry… multiple times? George VI had no intention to become a King and was not trained to become one. As the younger brother, extremely shy and with his speech impediment, he was looking towards an ordinary, albeit wealthy and aristocratic, family life. Confronted with unexpected circumstances, he showed great courage as he would later on during World War 2.

Colin Firth plays an admirable and convincing George VI. I was amazed at how he learned the King’s stammer. It must be extremely difficult for an actor to master a stammer when one is not so impaired. But then it is an actor’s job to be able to act…Geoffrey Rush in the part of formidable Ryan Logue who helps George VI is simply brilliant: an Australian “nobody” as the soon-to-be King George VI calls him once, he was not a medical doctor, nor a certified speech therapist. His gift, because that is what it truly was, was to be able to bring out the best in people. WW1 soldiers whom he helped find their voices again after the traumas they endured in the trenches or Bertie/George VI, he considered all men equal in front of adversity. His mix of tongue twisters/breath exercises and yes, psychotherapy, got to the root(s) of the future King’s speechlessness. Both actors will probably be nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

David Seidler, the scriptwriter, was also a stutterer when he grew up. He remembers having listened to the King’s slowly enunciated war speeches on the radio while a child in England. The idea of a movie on George VI was always in the back of his mind. He met with Ryan Logue's only surviving son. The project went on hold in the early 1980s when the Queen Mom (George VI's widow) asked him not to go forward while she was still alive. Little did he know he’d have to wait for so long: she lived up to the age of 102!

What strikes the spectator though at the end of the movie is the current Royal Family’s misplaced pride: if this “secret” had been exposed earlier, it would have made the House of Windsor appear more humane, less remote, less imbued with itself, with convention, appearance and history. Maybe they would have done something for Prince Charles’ ears?

The original King's Speech can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhFW_auT20