A film about King George VI's stutter

Rating: 7/10 (10 June 2014)

Plot Summary The film starts off with the protagonist, King George VI (aka Bertie), waiting nervously in a hallway, about to give a speech. As he begins his speech, we notice that he is stuttering and struggling to find words. We are faced with the main issue within the story: the King's inability to give a speech. The King's wife, Queen Elizabeth, tries to find help by visiting several speech therapists. Both the Duke and his wife are about to give up hope when the Queen meets Lionel Logue. Even though Lionel has some rather peculiar methods, the Queen is inclined to give it a chance. During the first session, Lionel Logue persuades the Duke to record himself reading aloud one of Shakespeare's poems while listening to extremely loud music but immediately after, the Duke runs out of the office convinced that it did not work. It all seems of little importance until Bertie's father dies and the Duke is forced to success him and a confident, competent King is needed. Bertie listens to the LP Lionel gave him when he recorded himself. To Bertie's surprise the speech on the tape went well and his wife and he decide to give Lionel another try. Over a period of weeks leading up to Bertie's first great speech Bertie and Lionel become friends and Bertie's confidence builds. One heated discussion arises when Lionel tries to determine any psychological issues that could have caused Bertie's stuttering, but it is resolved and their friendship grows stronger. When Bertie is coronated and becomes King George VI he gives his first speech. Analysis & opinion
In our opinion, the plot of the movie is quite attractive and the actors are well-chosen for this movie. However, the whole story is about King George VI having trouble with giving a speech since he is suffering from a stammer. This is a little too extensive since it's the only storyline and makes it quite boring to watch the movie for two hours. We think it could have been told in a much easier way and maybe a second storyline could have made the movie more interesting. A story can be told in two different ways: a diegetic and a non-diegetic way. A diegetic way of storytelling is that the story is explained by the actions of the characters and the fictional world is actually shown to the audience. A non-diegetic way is that things are explained to the audience as how they are supposed to look and what actions the characters are going to take. We consider this film to be told in a diegetic way, which is often the case with movies. Only in the beginning and at the end some informative text is used to explain the rest of the story. These parts can thus be considered non- diegetic.
The story does not contain any flashbacks or flash forwards. The syuzhet is the plot, the materialized events that are layed out in front of us within the movie. The fabula is the story we form in our heads when the syuzhet is presented to us. We use our imagination to conclude cause and effect. The things that relate the plot to the story are narrative logic and time. In the King's Speech, the fabula and syuzhet are applied in the following ways. At the start of the film we are shown Albert waiting in al hallway and another man preparing to speak into a microphone. We assume that the man is about to give a speech. A moment later, the plot proves our thoughts were right. Albert starts to give the speech, but he fails dramatically. The emphasized emotion in this scene makes us assume that the movie will focus on the stammering of Albert and how he deals with that.
This movie contains a three part structure, a form of dramatic structure. Dramatic structure is building of suspense in a story, similar to building of a storyline in a book. A three part structure has a setup, a confrontation and a resolution. The setup starts when Albert realizes that his brother won't be able to be a good king when his father dies. Now Albert is forced to go back to Lionel Logue to learn how to speak properly so that he can take over the position of his father. The introduction before the setup tells you the issue Albert is struggling with but it's not the setup since the stammering only becomes when Albert discovers he needs to be King. During the confrontation King George V dies and Edward becomes King. But it doesn't work out so Albert has to take over. This is the part where Albert accepts that he is King now and that he has a voice that he needs to use, just only needs to work on. This is shown in the scene where Lionel sits on the throne and argues with King Albert. The resolution is when Albert does his first war time speech. Lionel is standing in front of Albert and helping him along. A lot of the techniques that Albert has learned throughout his lessons with Lionel are shown in the speech, as it isn't perfect but Albert doesn't stammer. Conclusion We conclude that narration is of great importance in "The King's Speech", because the narrator (King George VI) is someone who struggles with speaking himself. This makes it occasionally hard for us, the viewers, to actually follow the plot line very well since the protagonist does not explain a lot. Despite some small flaws, we still consider the film as one of great value. It has a beautiful storyline and the actors are of great quality.