Colin Firth during press conference promoting The King’s Speech
I’ll begin with The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper (he also directed Daniel Deronda), screenplay David Seidler and numerous producers.
The microphone is a central image repeated from the opening sequence to the close: it’s what demanded of this man with a stammer, that he speak out into it
It’s a deeply absorbing, nay (for me) riveting movie in which with sensitive empathy, utterly convincing, Colin Firth enacts Bertie or George VI as someone afflicted with a very bad stammer, strong sense of inadequacy (despite his high rank), along with a truly noble, ethical, kindly nature. Good father, loving husband too. Yes, it’s another of these deeply reverent movies about the British monarchy, with our central characters behaving with exemplary perception and well-meaningness. Everyone but Firth is made up to look closely like the (unattractive) people they are enacting, so much so I am putting on this blog the actors in their ordinary clothes
Helena Bonham Carter was Elizabeth, George VI’s wife
Both women — Jennifer Ehle played Myrtle, Logue, the speech therapist’s wife — spent their time looking compassionate, reassuring, patting the men or children in sight. Their remarkable talents were thrown away, or only a smidgin of it used. Bonham Carter is protean in the types and power she lends to all her roles (she is the only live presence in the recent Harry Potter film). I suggest Ehle did not get the lead role for to see her next to Firth at the closing scene on the balcony greeting and reassuring their adoring public as WW2 sets grimly in would reek too strongly of Darcy and Elizabeth grown middle-aged
Jennifer Ehle recently
Part of the fun for me was to bring out of my memory which actor was this or that person playing this or that role. I felt a certain triumph on recognizing in Baldwin an aged Anthony Andrews, in a minor functionary David Bamber. These surrounding roles bring me to why I say in my header but doesn’t bear too much thinking about. The performances felt dazzling in part because the stereotypes were so cleverly inflected with corruption, flattery, aggrandizement, as, for example, Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop kept stealing the scenes:
Jacobi steals this scene (Ely Cathedral stood in for Westminster Abbey)
But all the roles except Bertie, Logue and (for a bit) David (Edward) were stereotypes. The full psychological reality given George VI and apparently Geoffrey Rush as Logue makes us not pay attention to how little beyond two dimensions is given anyone else.
I say apparently because a little thought makes one realize how idealized, unreal is the account of Logue in the film:
Logue and Bertie walking in the park together
Lionel Logue had no degree; he is presented as someone without much money who gets along (just) on his unconvenional therapy business. Logue became something of a Rasputin the way he managed to help the Duke and then king who became dependent on Logue’s presence for the rest of his life when it came to public speaking (which happened often enough). After all there is a direct parallel between Edward’s (called David in the film, played by David Pearce) infatuation with Mrs Simpson (Eve Best) and the development of such a strong dependency on her, he gives up his throne to have her as his life’s support and companion. But in this film Mrs Simpson is demonized: presented as ludicrously promiscuous, exploitative, hard, and Edward as cruel and nasty, derisive to his younger brother, Bertie, so we don’t think to see the parallel, but there is one. This kind of dependence with someone who is an utter outsider can be seen in other members of the royal family (Prince Charles has shown this).
Can it be the mediocrity of their intelligence and pressure of the fishbowl job? Jim did say the story explaining how Bertie came to stammer was true enough: he was bullied by a nanny, his older brother, his father, George V (played by Michael Gambon, as presented a piece of cake, so easy) did say to Bertie: I was terrified by my father and I will make you very scared to me (words to this effect). One of the most moving moments in the film has Firth breaking down into tears not just because he stammers, but because he has been so narrowly educated (he’s only a naval officer).
At any rate had whatever the relationship between Logue and George VI been thought about with intelligence, regarding them as complex, ambivalent adults interacting, instead of Logue all love and pious support and the King at first disdainful, distrustful but then sheer gratitude, the movie might have made a serious statement about the condition and experience of life of a super-privileged disabled man. It was something more complex than the servant becoming the master; it was not simply playing at being equals (as is suggested by Logue). Logue and Bertie used one another.
Alas the film offered no adult useful insights into the relationship between a life-long therapist-companion and powerful disabled person.
The film was rather simply popularly heart-wrenching because Firth knows how to be heart-wrenching with poised dignity. Jeremy Irons slides too far into the neurotic (perhaps is too thin) so he can be mocked and for men in our macho culture is embarrassing. Firth remains close to calm control, on the edge of the breaking point (and the massive shoulders help project this image).
The music (non-diegetic) was repeatedly Beethoven, including the king’s last speech, given upon the declaration of WW2 was eloquent. I assume this is the one George VI gave.
**************
I thought my friends and readers might also like to know we three (Jim, aka the Admiral, Izzy and I) passed our Christmas day together.
Early morning Izzy and I watched some videos of spectacular ice-skate dancing to the music of the Nutcracker (a famous pas de deux arrangement); when it came time to exchange presents (around 11:30) we all liked our gifts. I knew mine were new sets of the Poldark two mini-series, newly digitalized DVDs with a few features, but Jim and Izzy didn’t know theirs. He loved his Sondheim book of lyrics, brief essays, photographs: Finishing the Hat, and Izzy seemed to appreciate her two biographies of J.K. Rowling to the point that when we returned around 5 am, she took both to her room in the back to start reading.
We worried perhaps we were going too early and to too early a showing of The King’s Speech (see above) when we set out directly after present-opening, but in fact we arrived only 20 minutes before The King’s Speech was to begin and by 12:25 pm when it did the theater was packed. When we got out at around 2:30 lines to get in were long. Mark’s Duck House was the same non-pretentious place, and again my heart sunk a bit when I saw what seemed to be a crowd in front and at least a half-hour wait. But no, since we were just 3 we got a table quickly. The meal was scrumptious: spring rolls, dumplings, peking duck, eggplant, and beef fried rice. My glass of Merlot was fine.
After 5 when we arrived home, Jim stayed in the front reading his new book and listening to the Messiah, Izzy read her book in the back, watched ice-skating, listened to more Christmas music and had the TV on. I watched three more episodes of Barchester Chronicles (for my Trollope project), drank madeira, finished Graham’s Stranger from the Sea.
We were all tired from our efforts on one another’s behalf by 9 pm tonight. Yesterday Izzy had had her third date with Jessie, and came home from the National Gallery with presents; we will go forth to reciprocate with some for him this Monday. And Christmas Eve Jim and I had had our usual long walk, this time to the Masonic Temple to gaze out at Old Town from a height, and then round the neighborhood to see the lights. I had written on facebook:
Twilight walk in our neighborhood & Old Town, Alexandria. We do this each year on the 24th. There were fewer houses with Christmas lights this year and none like a circus, though some houses lit (new occupants?) for the first time. An in-between time, day’s last light when night-time seems to come as peace slowly. Strange picturesque. And then the dark.
And now today our talk had been good and all was kindness and cheer between us, but it was something of an effort as it was (as usual) just us three — and when we were home, the two pussycats. I had managed to post a little to 6 listservs (!) in the morning, and read through a series of essays on Trollope’s Palliser novels (I’m almost ready to write).
I’ve written this blog to keep myself awake to midnight that I might sleep for 5-6 straight and wake up refreshed and ready for Day 2 (Boxing Day).
Ellen
P.S. For Boxing Day at the National Gallery see “Reveries under the Sign of Austen.”
A gift from Peter Birchall:
“XMAS EVE ON SMACK
They spake a wandering star, a winter night;
The while Caduceus’ double snake
Hissed enmity, which thing
Was fanged by Blake
To sting!
Yes,
Crowned King!
By that same hand
Gave mystic dove pale wing,
Taught Seraphim rare saraband:
A needle is a thousand points of light.
PAPAVER IPSE FECIT
For you, Diana, I’d like to say yesterday was really healing to us. Last year the hurt from two years previous was too raw, too fresh, for me to get over; but time is now being allowed to do its business.
Ellen
“”The King’s Speech” is easily one of the best films of the year and managed to move me despite the young man in front of me (at an industry screening) picking up his mail (physical, actual mail) and going through it piece by piece during much of the film. The only false note is the otherwise wonderful Timothy Spall’s coarse caricature of Churchill. The most moving – and revealing – scene to me is the one in which the duke struggles to tell his (adoring) little daughters a bedtime story. Few things could show more heart-breakingly what stuttering can cost than this intimate vignette. (The scene after he has become king and the two little girls stop short as he reaches out to embrace them and primly curtsy to him is also pretty moving and revealing on a different level.) Jim C”
hi Ellen, thanks for that review of The King’s Speech. We are planning on seeing it but it sounds like a mixed experience. happy new year, Ann
Do go see it. It’s perhaps one of the best or better films of the year — though _White Material_ is much much better. That’s on my blog too. Happy new year to you too, Ellen
I’ll add my support for this mini-review. I went to see the movie yesterday, too, and highly recommend it!
Rachel
To the extent that this film creates genuine sympathy for a disability, it’s important and I wish all people (who know something of the story — it’s addressed to people in the know about Englishness) would see it. But to the extent it ignores how much privilege works to help this man and how so many would be ignored and derided, it fails. And I did hear people in the theater laughing where they should not have. Ellen
Jim tells me he has read a review of the film by Peter Finch (?) in the Guardian. Finch says he himself stammered as a boy and remembers that when George VI gave a speech it was ever to said to be vastly better than the previous, quite all right, and it never was. Ellen
Thanks for posting Peter’s poem, Ellen. It was lovely to read that you had such a beautiful day – the sort that stores up restfulness for all the busy workadays ahead. It’s like that for us here this weekend too, though we don’t do as many “special” things as you do, no presents or movie-going. But I made a great low-carb turkey dinner, with the almond meal cranberry stuffing, creamed cauliflower, and our favorite Brussels sprouts/chestnuts/turkey drippings/garlic dish. Also made Peter a low-carb green apple pie with almond meal crust, and he loved it. A little visit to the neighbors and exchange of cat presents, and that was all. Today is just blissfully peacefully quiet and I’m reading on Facebook about all the snow friends around the country are getting. It’s even cool and grey here in Southern California, never got above 60 today. But it’s warm within, eating turkey leftovers and watching the overstimulated cats quarreling about complicated unknowable cat matters.
Like Ellen, I too recommend The King’s Speech, and am thrilled to see Colin Firth come so fully into his own in his last two films (and truly as an actor, and not at all as a sex symbol), clearly revealing that one’s acting talent and opportunities can increase with age, rather than diminish. I hope he gets the Academy Award for his role he – he so deserves it.
I actually suspect that Jennifer Ehle was cast in the film primarily because having both her and Firth in a film together would mean that every fan of the 1995 P&P would go to the movies to see the film.
Watching the film, when Jennifer Ehle/Myrtle Logue met Colin Firth/King George VI for the first time and went into near shock, I whispered to the friend who was with me, “And Elizabeth reacted just as strongly to Darcy the first time she saw him too!”
Tracy Marks
Izzy wrote an insightful blog on this:
http://msisobel.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/the-kings-speech/
especially
there’s still that distraction of “It’s Colin Firth!” Contrast with Geoffrey Rush, who utterly vanished into the character of the speech therapist, as well as the rest of the cast, including Firth old leading lady Jennifer Ehle, though Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen had more trouble, for the same reason as Firth.
The film is done with an awareness of history, with the development of technology that toward is practically seen as antiquated being newfangled; not only do we have all the radio equipment, we see first Carter and then Firth get confused by an elevator. Future history too; the scenes with George’s daughters puts a quiet emphasis on young Elizabeth. Not to mention the artifice said technology creates; the climatic speech is followed with the entire long walk from the broadcast booth to the office where he has his picture taken supposedly giving it. …
Penny: “I wish I could see The King’s Speech but it won’t be in my area, too far away I think not sure why. Such big names in it. I wonder if Wallis Simpson is played as evil because she and her husband were Nazi sympathizers?”
No, there is no reference at any rate to Nazism with respect to Mrs Simpson. The King’s Speech is aimed at the typical costume drama audience (a number of the people are also stars on BBC/PBS film adaptations) and perhaps the movie-house owners in Brooklyn don’t think the general audience goes for these. Ellen
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Note on Wallis Simpson: her biography indicates that she was, in fact, much as portrayed in her brief appearance in this movie; and subsequently wrote to a friend that she did not expect Edward to give up the throne and was not enamored of the life they lived afterward. She apparently misjudged the particularity with which the British regarded the monarchy and thought that after he became king, “things would just work out” and she’d end up married to a king.
Rumors of Nazi sympathizing dogged their entire lives, including the one referenced in the film, that von Ribbentrop had had an affair with her. No evidence has ever surfaced to substantiate them.
Yes, the film was a melodramatic tear-jerker. I don’t know that it would have been “better” if there had been more social-realist commentary on the life of privilege. If anything, the substance of the story was in itself commentary that the life of privilege did not prevent one from being abused and ending up a klutz of one kind or another. And I’m not sure why I would care about psychological depths of the “powerful disabled person,” as this is not likely to give me any insights into my own life or life in general. I might be more interested in someone like FDR, who actually exercised power over the fates of nations; but again, it seems to roll up into a shrug.
mp
I care about disabled people. My daughter is one and I have strong Aspergers traits. Actually since watching the film I’ve read more books about disability and have further complaints about the way the king’s speech was presented as a species of great heroism. This feeds into the wrong common sense that disabled people are actually incompetent in more ways than the area of their disability. In so many of these movies and stories any achievement of a disabled person is presented as super human. In fact disabled people are like others except for their disability and have many skills and achievements — it’s that they are usually not given any chane to develop them since the social intolerance is so strong. Ellen
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