Spending a career as a royal subject “The Screen Queen” myself – wink, wink – I suppose if I had to give a speech before an entire country just as World War II was erupting, I’d stutter a bit on the radio, too. Such is the case of King Albert (Colin Firth) affectionately called “Bertie” to those in the royal family. And he’s also, or so we will learn, the less sought after brother to David, the Duke of Windsor (Guy Pearce) next in line for the throne after their father, King George the V passes away. But this could be a problem as David is in love with a woman who is a divorcee and you aren’t allowed to marry a divorcee in accordance with the very Church David’s throne will hail over. Enter Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush)a speech therapist who could slash portrays several things to Bertie: speech therapist/best friend/psychologist because a good part of his job is getting to the bottom of why the King stutters in the first place. The two have an Odd Couple sense of pairing with the ongoing amusement of Bertie refusing to lower his standards to the therapist. Or as he says “My game, my castle, my rules.” Helena Bonham Carter plays the Queen which shouldn’t be a stretch for her – this is her second queen this year (the other being the Queen of Hearts for her husband Tim Burton’s film Wonderland.) And Bonham Carter knows from elegance – remember Wings of a Dove? But as for the film’s overall premise, whenever a big person, larger than life, is confronted with a small obstacle that they don’t think they can handle – in this case public speaking – we as an audience can identify with their fear. And those types of films are often British, artistically shot, well-contained and carefully crafted, and comfortable but grande. Think The Queen though these films are often made my Harvey Weinstein and have Oscar written all over them. How could we ever forget Shakespeare In Love and The English Patient. Perhaps the most interesting point of this movie is that it was written by a man with a childhood stutter himself, David Seidler, who at age 73 is a Television writing veteran. The director, Tom Hooper gave us HBO’s John Adams. In the end, Firth delivers an Oscar winning perfomance. Here’s hoping that when he arrives at that podium in February, his stutter disappears. Four tiaras
