The King's Speech (2010)

A surprising film. More fun and more absorbing and more moving than I might have expected. I expected to be good in a "what's on PBS this Sunday night" kind of way but found this film to have an emotional immediacy that proved to be totally surprising. Generally i don't have an emotional reaction to a film in its first moments but here I was actually and honestly moved -- to the edge of tears -- in the opening scene. That scene -- in which the Duke of York struggles to deliver an address to a crowd of people in a stadium and listening throughout the empire via wireless -- to convey the shame at root of what is the king-to-be's struggle throughout the film. His struggle, his shame, his terror -- all were utterly palpable in a way that, while not subtle, made the predicament become immediately real to me. Thus, I responded with forceful empathy from the outset of the film. Colin Firth does the work of the role with charismatic humanity -- developing the king's nasal reedy vocality while also conveying a forcefully genteel masculinity. He's a strong man hobbled by circumstance and this comes through powerfully in this opening scene. (Gratefully, the film chooses to begin with the Bertie, the Firth character, rahter than with Lionel, the Geoffrey Rush character. Both the scripting and the performance of the Lionel character proved a bit harder sell for me, so I am glad that the film anchored itself so deftly within the character and struggle of Firth's Bertie.) I didn't realize until I was doodling the notes on the above film doodle that the film is constructed as perhaps the first Merchant-Ivory/BBC entrant into one of the most successful recent genres of American film: the bromantic comedy. Indeed, this film is most essentially a love story -- of the unlikely, transformative and redemptive friendship of between the man who would be king and a brewer's son from the Australian outback. The narrative is simply how a man could barely speak became the orator whose words guided the British people through the darkest hours of war. That narrative hook ups the stakes for the story -- it MATTERS that Bertie learns to speak with/through his stammer. But the heart of the move comes from the struggle of these two men becoming friends. In true RomCom tradition, the film even gives us the post-breakup montage sequence in which each is depicted as being miserable without the other after some ridiculous fight. And it is the film's adherence to romantic comedy genre formulations that delivers the least effective and most manipulative sequence (the one in which Lionel's lack of credentials is revealed as a betrayal of trust). It's an unnecessary wrinkle, one seemingly utilized by the film to ratchet up additional emotional tension just as the historical details threaten to overtake the film. But it's a brilliant move by the filmmakers, really, to make this not as a buddy movie (those typically need a common obstacle -- like "the man" -- to work) but to imagine it as a bromantic comedy. And I do think that genre choice makes it a crowd pleaser as well as crack for anglophiles.

But what I think hooked me emotionally was not the friendship story but this as a narrative about fear. Bertie's stammer literalizes the way that unconfronted fear can paralyze even the most formidable of creatures. The film does edge a teensy bit toward psychobabble but the film also develops the peculiar lives of the royals as something to empathize with. (Usually only romance does this in the movies, the queen can't marry the one she loves blah blah.) Here, though, the royal must develop emotional insight. ANd this is where the character of Bertie really sang to me -- his stammer literalizes his experience of fear and connects it to his anxieties about not performing to expectations. Thus, for all his strength of intellect and principle and character, Bertie is ever certain that he's doing it wrong and is confident in his fundamental inadequacy. It's a powerful character arc, one that spoke immediately to me in that opening scene, and which then had purchase upon my emotions throughout.
In terms of performances, Colin Firth delivers an expertly charismatic performance -- compelling, focused, amplifying the core integrity necessary to the role. What I so admired about this performance (something missing from Firth's exceptional work under Tom Ford last year) is that this performance harnessed Firth's gift for witty self-deprecation, which he deploys here to convey both Bertie's humility and his arrogance. It's what elevates Firth's work here and, in some ways, showcases all of his strengths as an actor in a way that A SINGLE MAN did not. Geoffrey Rush (who I never can quite get myself to like that much) is fine in the role. I was struck that the character of Lionel really does well utilizing Rush's sloppy and vaguely reprobate presence in service of the character. The problem I had here, as I often do with Rush's work, is that everything was spot on yet I somehow missed the sense of personhood in the role. All the details were right, and he seemed to be inhabiting the character, but Lionel seemed always a character and never a person. Helena Bonham Carter gave a delightful return to old kind of performance. In the first decade of her film career, HBC seemed most adept at amplifying the contemporary registers within her corseted characters, retrieving them from the Royal Shakespeare embalming school and delivering them with a new wave-ish verve to contemporary audiences. And that's what she does here with the Queen Mum -- an acerbic, sharp, loving and present wife to a husband who rightly adores her. It's fun to see HBC back in these wigs, after so much Tim Burton and Harry Potter inspired ravings/rovings and HBC does deliver a vivid and clarifying performance. The film is really, pretty much, only about the three of them. But Guy Pearce does a nice job as Edward/David and Derek Jacobi is perfectly obsequious as the archbishop. Jennifer Ehle is great as Lionel's wife and a raft of capable and charismatic younger actors do well as the kids in each of the respective houses. Claire Bloom is brilliant as Queen Mary (her reaction when Pearce collapses with grief in her arms is stunningly funny). Only Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill is off-pitch, but that might be because I just never like watching him.
I should also note that the sound design in this film is really deft. I don't know much about such things but it worked in ways I found exhilarating. Also, the wall in Lionel's shabby studio -- a ruined wall, bearing the bruises of too many wallpapers -- is probably the coolest looking wall I've ever seen and one I want for my dream house. So there. That's it. I liked THE KING'S SPEECH -- much much more than I expected.