REVIEW: The King's Speech (2)

THE OSCAR STUTTER

Tim Hooper’s sumptuous period drama The King’s Speech comes with much hype and four Oscars.  If it were just another film about humanizing British royalty, it might not have connected so well with the American public and the voters at the Academy; at heart it is a story of an unlikely friendship -- breaking class distinctions, everyone understands. There is something funny and pathetic about the King of an Empire where the sun never set, not being able to speak without the help of an Australian failed actor, who would be a charlatan if he weren’t so empathetic and effective.

Prince Albert (Colin Firth), ordinary looking and without airs, has a major problem -- a pronounced stutter.  One can only imagine what he must have gone through at the brutal public schools that the aristocracy went to, but it must have contributed to his somewhat diffident manner. Under the worried gaze of his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), he undergoes all kinds of painful therapies, till she finds Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a speech therapist with no qualifications.

He is more shrink then speech doctor, and to erase the royalty-commoner distinction, insists on calling the prince Bertie. Under the most unusual circumstances, Albert is thrust onto the throne. His brother Edward (Guy Pearce) abdicates for the love of twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson (Eve Best).

The times are bad too -- Hitler is forcing the world into another war, and it will be up to the new king to break the news to his subjects on the radio.  The last bit, when the speech is delivered, just lifts the film into another plane -- till then it’s a now uneasy-now warm relationship between Bertie and Lionel -- the scene where the king stands in front of the old-fashioned mike, is a triumph of the will. The audience holds its breath to see if he can speak without stammering. When asked how he can ever thank him, Logue calmly says, “Knighthood’.

The film is as much about Logue as it is about the reluctant king (he weeps helplessly and copiously in one scene); the man with dubious credentials, ambition and chutzpah. At one point he evicts the Archbishop from Westminster Abbey, parks himself cheekily on the throne, so that the new King George Vl, can fly into a stutter-less rage.

It’s full of lovely little details, gentle humour and, of course, grand backdrops. Firth and Rush both play their roles to perfection, and Helena Bonham Carter plays a normal woman after a long while, looking gorgeous, regal and gentle. In today’s age, when appearance matters more than ability, audiences  would be able to understand even better, why it was so important for the king to have a good voice. Now, in the TV age, he would also have to be made-up and styled.