THE KING’S SPEECH (2010)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Tom Hooper

SCREENWRITER: David Seidler

FILM STARS: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Gambon, Claire Bloom, Anthony Andrews

COUNTRY: England

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Mark Logue, Peter Conradi

TYPE: Non Fiction

PUBLISHER: Quercus

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2010

COUNTRY: Australia

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2010

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The King’s Speech : How One Man Saved the Monarchy

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS: One of those films geared to awards. BAFTA awards. The pleasant surprise here is the film was also entertaining and ended up winning Academy Awards.

The Oscars always like English historical dramas (the more pompous the better) with something which occasionally suggests an inferiority complex on their part. Hamlet (1948), Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), The Last Emperor (1987) all, UK films, won best picture. There are many others nominated and applauded but such insecurity leads to a blinkered view on the merits of the film or sometimes a blind eye to the faults – A Passage to India (1984), A Room with a View (1985), Howards End (1992), The English Patient (1996), Elizabeth (1998), The Imitation Game (2014).

In the case of The King’s Speech, a modest budgeted drams they got it right though you don’t need to see the film twice.

The Duke of York. the future King George VI of the United Kingdom, who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist. As Logue helps George VI the men become friends. After George’s brother, Edward VIII, abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast upon Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in 1939.

That’s it in a nutshell.

There is humour, there is drama, there is emotion. It is all restrained, which is a blessing in this type of film.

Ultimately, despite my joy of the film, I am ultimately detached emotionally. Even if I had a stammer like that of George VI, I’m not sure I could relate to his character. This is lifestyles of the rich and famous dealing with themselves … albeit to stir the country patriotically through a speech. Which is a pity because it seems that George VI is the only member of the British royal family (or for that matter any royal family perhaps) of that time (or until recent times) who was quite humble (by royal standards). Having said that I’m not sure he and Logue were as informal as they are depicted in the film.

I should say it is great seeing an Australian speech therapist (who the English establishment at the time wrote off as a “quack” probably as much because he was Australian as anything else) teaching the English how to speak, though it was probably the last time that happened. We seem to relish our broadness of accent.

As a child, screenwriter David Seidler (born 1937) developed a stammer, which he believed was caused by the emotional trauma of World War II and the murder of his grandparents during the Holocaust. As a child during the war his Jewish family relocated to the USA, and he grew up in New York. He worked in television and as a playwright before writing for Hollywood most notably the TV film Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988) and Francis Ford Coppola’s wonderful Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988). As a stammerer he had heard of George’s story and during the late 1970s and 1980s he researched the same but found little information on Logue. Eventually he contacted Logue’s son, Valentine Logue, who agreed to discuss his father and make his notebooks available if the Queen Mother gave her permission, but she asked him not to do so in her lifetime, and Seidler halted the project. After the Queen Mother died in 2002 Siedler returned to the project. A script was turned out and Geoffrey Rush became interested in the project and a money was found for the production. Then, two months or so before filming the production team learned of a diary containing Logue’s original notes on his treatment of the George which was in the process of being turned into a non-fiction book by Logue’s grandson Mark Logue and journalist Peter Conradi. They contacted the writers and then reworked the script to include details from the non-fiction work.

It is this detail which gives the film much of its authenticity and richness. The attention to detail is wonderful.

Of course, having said that, it doesn’t mean the film is historically accurate. Churchill did not loom large in the proceedings, Edward VIII appeased and (perhaps) admired the Nazi regime, and, inevitably, events are telescoped and truncated to make the film flow as a narrative.

Still, it picks up, errr the vibe of the time.

The film was filmed on many actual locations and looks good. Director Tom Hooper is into making historical dramas (the miniseries Elizabeth I (2005) and John Adams (2008), the film The Danish Girl (2015) and even the period musical Les Misérables (2012)) so he knows how to utilise a location to add realism to a film. But ultimately, this is an actor’s film. All are good. Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter received critical acclaim, earning them Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively, with Firth winning his category. I was happy for Firth. I’ve always liked him ever since I saw (the great) Another Country (1984) at the cinemas when released though, admittedly I was more engrossed with the character he played. In any event I followed his career for a while (as I did with Rupert Everett, from Another Country, who I was convinced would be the bigger star, and was, for a while) and dutifully watched his films (some hard-to-find way back when) which included leads in small films and supports in bigger films. He was always good though his roles were getting smaller and smaller. It was probably his large support role in the phenomenally successful Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and its sequels that put him on the map and led to The King’s Speech, not a big film, but quite a showcase especially when playing against or rather with Geoffrey Rush. Guy Pearce as Edward VIII is excellent also, but he always is.

The film made money, a lot of money.

The book is history and will fill in the holes an give background and context to the film if you need the same. I don’t.

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