Deliberate, heartfelt, softly powerful and beautiful, justly deserves its Academy Award

Rating: 9/10 (4 March 2013)

The King's Speech, the film, is very much like the king's speech, the speech. It is deliberate, heartfelt, softly powerful and beautiful to the ear (and the eye). Despite its backdrop of historical events of global and continuing significance, The King's Speech focuses relatively minutely upon Bertie (Colin Firth), otherwise known as King George VI, and Lionel (Geoffrey Rush), his unconventional speech therapist. Burdened from childhood with a stammer, Bertie must deal with his duty of public appearances, a domineering and unsympathetic father and a free-spirited brother who is uninterested in his destiny as the crown prince. The film follows Bertie's speech lessons and budding friendship with Lionel, as circumstances raise him to the office of monarch of a nation on the brink of war.
The script feels like a play in its pacing and witty dialog, yet Tom Hooper directs it into a film with a simple, personal and artistic style. He often utilizes off-center framing, fish-eye close-ups and several sequences of following a character's back as he moves through rooms and passages, allowing the viewer to see every mixed emotion as it registers on a face and to really feel the world from Bertie's perspective. Firth gives a vulnerable, powerful and nuanced performance in his Oscar winning role. Rush, Helena Bonham Carter (as Bertie's wife Elizabeth), Guy Pierce (as Bertie's brother David, King Edward) and Michael Gambon (as Bertie's father, King George V) turn in the winningly solid performances one would expect from these gifted actors. Timothy Spall does a highly recognizable Winston Churchill without falling off the caricature deep end, and Jennifer Ehle (whom many may remember as Elizabeth to Firth's Darcy in 1996's Pride & Prejudice) pops up now and again as Lionel's wife Myrtle. This quiet, aesthetic, inspirational and charming film justly deserves its Best Picture Academy Award.
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