The King’s Speech (2010)

“The King’s Speech” arrives at cinemas heralded as the greatest movie of the year, and a strong candidate for this year’s Oscars. How these rumors get started I don’t know, but once again, having just watched the film, I am somewhat disappointed. Not that the movie is bad in itself, it isn’t, it has a good screenplay, strong performances and is well handled by the director, who constantly chooses moving flowing shots. But it isn’t that good, even if in current Cinema our standards are lowered. It has been seen before (even more so with Geoffrey Rush in a “mentor” role), and has a lot of difficulty in discerning exactly what it is supposed to be about. Is it about a person with a speech problem? Is it about a controversial time in a nation’s history and the man at the centre of it? Or is it about the speech itself, given at the outburst of the Second World War, and the story that leads up to it? Any of these three topics could have given a consistent movie, but the film dangles between the three, each in turn, and ends up having no actual story thread that is gripping. The film starts by showing that Colin Firth, the second son of King George V, future King George VI, stammers, and can’t speak to a public audience. For one, you know that by the end of the film he will deliver the all important speech, so there is no surprise, no drama, nor climax. The movie also shows the scenes as matter of fact, and taking aside the music, nothing in it gives it that lifting quality that everybody is hailing about. So the first third of the movie sees Helena Bonham Carter seek the help of Rush, always perfect as the mentor, to help her husband to overcome his problem. Rush, off course, will be much more than a speech therapist, he will guide Firth a la Obi-Wan Kenobi in the paths to be a just and good ruler of the nation. But, unlike Henry Higgins, we seldom see their exercises. All scenes end in the same, Firth turning his back on Rush by some discussion or other, saying “the sessions are over”, but eventually capitulating and coming back. Then the movie switches, and the political instability comes forward, as the king dies, the eldest son (Guy Pierce) abdicates out of love (a plot that takes a long time), and Firth finds himself, almost unwillingly, in the throne, at the outbreak of the war, and during all this time the fact that he has a problem is almost forgotten. And then, he has to deliver the enter-the-war-speech, and so back again comes his problem, and back again comes Rush. No surprise in what happens. The critics call the movie uplifting. But uplifting for whom? England, the World, or the King himself? By the end, the film tries to give the feeling that everything is a-ok. The Second World War is about to star? Hitler is about to kill 6 million Jews? Not to worry, the King has delivered his speech without stammering. Everything will be ok. Let’s give him three cheers. The best of the movie is not its story, but the lines, the screenplay, especially the scenes between Rush and Firth, where the dialogue flows and funny moments occur. Character development of Rush’s character is also very good, as is his performance, but yet again, he is just being himself. Firth will probably get the Oscar for his stammering, and justly so I think, and Carter should also get it, although her chances are slimmer. For Best Film however, this is not the one and can’t be. It’s period piece, a “British” production, with excellent cast (including a very amusing Timothy Spall as Churchill), but one that by trying to focus on one detail but also in the context at the same time losses its coherence, and ends up being rather dull and predictable. It’s not by making an heroic speech at the end and add it good music that makes a movie uplifting. It’s not by inserting funny moments in speech lessons that makes it interesting. The movie follows a step-by-step-screenwriting-class-screenplay in the relation between Firth and Rush, which is the centre of the film. They break-up, they make up, they break-up for stupid reasons that a single word would solve but none give it so that 10 more minutes of film can pass. And then all is lost amidst the political drama, and the simplicity fades. A more simple straight approach would be, in my opinion, more effective. The end result may be more pleasing to the british critic, but ends leaving the world audience with the taste that this is a “seen it-done that” kind of movie. And what is with the constant focus on young Elizabeth? Firth has off course two daughters, who appear by brief moments on two or three scenes. But each time they do the camera focus on one of them and everyone around stipulates that she is Elizabeth a thousand times. A low and poor trick to make the audiences smile and say “ah, there is the young Queen”...