God Save the King's Speech!

Rating: 9/10 (14 February 2012)

This is a really entertaining movie - a great story of triumph and an interesting glimpse at the common man interacting with royalty. I doubt the King and his speech therapist were on first-person terms with one another as we see in the movie. That said, the relationship between the speech therapist and the royal is interesting. How Lionel Logue and King George VI interact and address the distinction between their class standings makes for some interesting interplay. My favorite scene was when Logue's wife comes home and finds out unexpectedly that the new King is in her humble house. She is completely shocked but keeps her composure. The challenge that public speaking presents for King George VI (Colin Firth) is huge. He stutters badly and this proves a great liability as radio becomes a more influential medium. He is embarrassed and when he faces the prospect of having to address the world more as he will expect to be King, he is dreadfully scared. He has tried many methods of speech therapy, none with great success and then he encounters an Aussie in Donal Logue (Geoffrey Rush) are founded on the belief that stuttering originates ultimately from a lack of self-confidence. As a result of his belief in the ability of people of any standing to believe in themselves, he doesn't allow the King to assume airs while he is treating him. When the King protests, he stands up to him. Again, I wonder if this is strictly true, but regardless, I'm sure there was some breaking of decorum in the King's treatment and so the positing of them as being on an equal footing is tolerable.
There is some fantastic acting in this movie. Firth plays a very popular and admirable monarch. The King seems an extremely honorable and decent person in contrast to his playboy brother Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) who famously abdicated the throne to be with his twice-divorced wife. Pearce captures the posh British accent perfectly and imbues Edward with a royal's obtuse combination of callousness, wildness, and hypersensitivity. Helena Bonham-Carter bears an eerie resemblance to the Queen Mother at that age and delivers a typically excellent performance. Michael Gambon is good as the father of two Kings, worried about his health and the future of the monarchy, and Derek Jacobi is great as a very prickly Archbishop of Canterbury, upset at the impudence of a commoner who wishes to use "his" cathedral in order that the King can rehearse his speech.
The plot, focusing on the time period starting with his disastrous 1925 radio speech to the Commonwealth until his coronation in 1937, is well-framed. The direction is confident and light, and the acting enhances the power of the movie. This is a great, thoughtful drama for adults.