The Kings Speech : Excellent!

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2011)

THE KING'S SPEECH is excellent film. For those who love history this is the film of the season. For those who love drama—the good kind—this is excellent film.
The background: 1934, essentially: the aged, sickly George V of England, the scandalous Edward, Prince of Wales is involved with Wallis Simpson—presently married but separated—and worse, the Prince with seemingly pro-Nazi sentiments. His younger brother, Albert (Bertie) suffers from stuttering, a speech impediment. The Prince of Wales becomes King Edward VIII on the death of his father, early 1936—still he is unmarried to Wallis Simpson. For those of us who grew up reading of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor the story was that Edward abdicated the throne for the woman he loved. From this movie, he appears to have been pushed out not only for his desire to marry a divorced woman, but his bad judgment. Enter Bertie—who is father to the present Queen Elizabeth.
Lionel Logue, from Australia, is an unconventional speech therapist. Bertie's wife, Lady Elizabeth (also a commoner)—who only died 2002, well into her nineties—found Lionel. And Lionel insists that the Duke must come to his consulting room; Lionel will not go to the palace. Glossing over dilemma of Royalty mixing with commoner, long story short, through learning the mechanics of breathing, exercise, tricks of speaking, and talk therapy Bertie overcomes his stammer, modifies his behavior to become an effective public speaker.
It is easy to underestimate how much public speaking played in winning the hearts and minds of a people disenchanted with a long war, seemingly unwinnable. (Sound familiar?) We need only think of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. This movie has all the main characters of Britain's historical figures: Winston Churchill, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain. The Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret both have a telling scene. Bertie has been made King George VI, he arrives home and he must greet with a kiss one of his two children; clearly a battle goes on inside him to kiss Margaret, the youngest; he resists that urge and kisses Elizabeth first, the one who will inherit the throne at his death. We do inherit some of the darnedest things, now don't we? From those who watch PBS and their take on the British Royal Family, we learn that Queen Elizabeth's sense of duty/responsibility results in large part from her irresponsible uncle's behavior that led to his abdication. That duty/responsibility are primary; individuals must subsume themselves to something that is beyond them, larger than them. A lesson we all need to learn, and sometimes never do learn.
There is something about the British Royal family that strikes a human cord. Whether it's "Mrs. Brown" the widowed Queen Victoria's relationship with her deceased husband's servant, John Brown; or "Chariots of Fire" with its portrayal of the same Prince of Wales as part of the 1924 Olympic Committee; or "The Queen" with its portrait of a Queen who bows to none must bow to Lady Diana at her funeral cortège; to the BBC/ PBS "The Lost Prince" about the epileptic Prince John who died at age 13, a younger brother to Edward and Bertie.