The King's Speech

Well the Oscars are over, and King's Speech took home Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. I guess it's time I watched it.

Set amongst the backdrop of a 1930s Britain slowly accelerating toward WWII, the story follows Prince Albert (Colin Firth), second son to King George V. Albert unfortunately has a serious stuttering problem, and as such ends up humiliating and disgracing himself at any public speaking event. To remedy the problem he seeks the help of several speech pathologists, all of whom fail, until he finally gives up. His wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) however, still wants to try, and as a last resort meets with Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a man she found in the classifieds. With much reluctance Albert is introduced to Lionel, whose therapy seems to border more on the psychological than on speech, which is very off putting to the rigid sensibilities of this monarch-to-be. Still, in an experiment where Lionel forces Albert to listen to loud music while reciting Shakespeare so he can't hear himself talk, Albert eventually listens to the playback of himself talking, and realizes he didn't stutter at all. Thus begins a long friendship and journey through hardship to eventually arrive at the most important speech of all, a 9 minute speech broadcast to all of Britain's territories on the declaration of war with Germany.

It's an often brilliant and very poignant story, but the real measure of this film is in its actors. Colin Firth is easily deserving of his Oscar, doing as the best actors do and portraying so much while saying so little. And thank god Geoffrey Rush is back in a big name drama to remind us all how great of an actor he is. You could almost tell it was painful for him to try to act Shakespeare badly. And while unfortunately she gets very little to say or do, Bonham Carter is wonderful as always. Put them all together and you get a powerhouse of acting that is hard to beat.

Now, I've mixed feelings on the direction. There were some shots that were absolutely stunning and looked like they were ripped from an art gallery, but there were also, especially in the first meeting between Albert and Lionel, some very oddly placed shots that distracted from the scene rather than enhance it. It seemed a bit too...pretentiously artsy. Trying to be interesting. Most of the movie flowed smoothly and the direction seemed seamless, but those couple weird shots, and the odd lingering moment at the end, seemed out of place. Basically I'm saying David Fincher should've won. That is all.

The only thing that kind of irks me about The King's Speech is that yes, it's a wonderful movie with a great story, script and actors. It also feels like every other wonderful period acting piece. There's nothing to complain about, it just didn't feel fresh. It didn't bring something new to the table. Again, this isn't to bash it in any way, it still deserves to be seen, I'm just sad the Social Network didn't get it.

The King's Speech gets a 10/10.