Rather than stammer in its paces, The King's Speech is a wondrously concise and pleasingly executed piece enrapturing us in the plight of its lead.

Rating: 7/10 (16 June 2011)

With The King's Speech, rising British director Tom Hooper revisits some familiar thematic ground upon which he had previously trodden with his 2009 feature The Damned United; specifically, his multi-award winning, and highly acclaimed class-comedy posing as a period/costume drama, zeroes in on a chapter more inclined towards failure or fault. This chapter of such things within the life of an individual one may, or may not, have heard an awful lot about, and yet are coerced into recognising a certain amount of fame or success prominent in their legacy, is the subject for The King's Speech, an impressive and wonderfully taut film rich in comedy as well as crackling dialogue delivered with aplomb by those therein.
Principally, the core item either film share is that the respective pieces are about chapters in the predominantly rich in incident, and plentiful in most other things, lives of two people built on failure and revolving around strife or struggles seemingly out of sync with everything else. Hooper's 2009 film The Damned United covered the exploits of a man with a wonderful stature and esteemed ability in the field of football management, he being Brian Clough; the film about a chapter of inadequateness with a football squad whom it was seemingly impossible not to garner some kind of success with, around which Clough's managerial career has passed into legend.
Here and now, with this Best Picture and BAFTA Best Film as-well-as-mostly-everything-else-under-the-sun winner from the crossover awards year 2010 to 2011, we observe the covering of that of Colin Firth's Prince Albert, later as George whilst King in an attempt to veer away from the "Germanic" roots of his Christian name, and his terrifying speech impediment that he had for as long as he could remember going a long way to rendering public speaking and radio broadcasts near-impossible. The short of it is that the film is as much a success as both Hooper's previous effort and most of what the buzz makes out of it, a film adhering to those writings of not-so-long-ago that most, if not all, of Britain's comedy is entirely imbued with a sense of class distinction or class clashing, but a telling of a rousing tale about a man confronting his fears or problems or demons, located wholly within himself, before gunning to win through in the end.
It is 1930s Britain, George V (Gambon) sits atop the throne over the British Isles and its Commonwealth with his son Edward (Pearce) lying in wait ahead of our Albert, whose problems with speaking, both publicly and privately, see all manner of social interaction with family and friends often go awry. We begin with a microphone dominating the screen, its presence overbearing and its sheer size magnified to overly dramatic affect, so much so that a longer shot of the room it is in dwarfs it in comparison thus revealing the honesty of its nature. A gentleman is ready to go on the air and is going through his regimented routine whilst making the entire process look very easy; an establishment of specialists in this field doing what they do and managing to tone down the intimidating presence of the microphone into something else feeling prominent. The sequence is in stark contrast to that of our inception into Albert's world of speaking, doing as such at Wembley Stadium, no less, on a cold day drenched in grey cinematography and failing to make what has just been established as the respectable grade. This attempt at an expansive speech proves to be the final straw, Albert's, or Bertie to his close companions, wife Elizabeth (Bonham Carter), The Duchess of York, then going on to seek the help Albert needs.
This help arrives in the form of Geoffrey Rush's all but show-stealing turn as Lionel Logue, a true to life Australian speech therapist whose base of operations is quite literally down in the depths of a building accessible only by cramped elevator. The Duchess has heard of certain buzzwords relating to Logue she usually looks upon with scorn; class distinctions and the physical necessity for the royals to have to literally 'descend' to Logue's class level in speaking to him prominent. Upon initially meeting him, he skips out of his lavatory and speaks freely towards her; later visits from Albert seeing Hooper shoot Firth's character with a ropey, dull background of peeling wallpaper and such whilst Logue is allowed all the richness and activity of furniture as well as the rest of his abode behind him – where class has previously been used to cite distinctions between one and the other, it is Logue whom Albert is frequenting for aid and their respective distinctions here are broken apart.
With Logue arrives his free-speaking and outlandish methods, of which persistently and really effectively blur lines between what are merely his methods and what might be mere arrogance; the seeds for such prejudices over that of the rich arriving when Logue is cast away by a stage director whom dismisses him during an stage reenactment despite Logue's fruitful credentials in playing the part. Around all of this brew the events which will push Albert into a stark confrontation with his issue, a going up against what it is his weakness is with what he'll have learnt as well as fought through the means of combating everything. George V's ever-deteriorating health and the fact it looks increasingly likely Edward will not make for a decent monarch but for his playboy lifestyle infused ways combine with George's own literal reiteration of the abilities one will require in calming a nation that'll be brought to its knees if the correct things are not said, done and related to as background stuff brewing on the Continent unfolds. Hooper's film is a resounding, pleasing cinematic spectacle; the bringing to life of a tale from decades ago and telling it with the sort of pathos and confidence that is entirely welcome.