Very Very Good Indeed

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2011)

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Colin Firth has rightly received plaudits for his portrayal of the complex conflicted but thoroughly decent man who was George VI. For me, though, Geoffrey Rush's performance is even better. Between the two of them they tell a gripping story about the relationship between a monarch and a commoner at a time when the role of both was changing rapidly as a result of the new mass-medium of radio.
The direction is, with one exception, flawless. The pacing is excellent. Helena Bonham-Carter is superb as George's wife and Timothy Spall puts in a good Churchill. The only reservation I have is with regard to Derek Jacobi's Archbishop of Canterbury. In a film that is so much about the diminishing distance between royalty and commoner I think it is a mistake to forget that Cosmo Lang spent many years ministering to some of the poorest inhabitants of some of London's poorest slums.