Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush excel in Tom Hooper’s thrilling THE KING’S SPEECH
THE KING’S SPEECH (Tom Hooper, 2010)
www.kingsspeech.com
Britain’s Royal Family is notoriously protective of their personal lives, and for many years they were somehow able to keep from the public the fascinating story of Prince Albert’s difficult battle against a severe stammer. A serious stutterer himself as a child, screenwriter David Seidler (TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM), who looked to the man known as Bertie as a role model, uncovered the dramatic tale and even got permission from the Queen Mum herself to pursue a cinematic version, as long as it came out after her death. So after gestating for decades, THE KING’S SPEECH is now a reality, a thrilling film that follows the prince’s (a marvelously vulnerable Colin Firth) struggle to find his voice as his aging father, King George V (Michael Gambon), falls ill and the prince of Wales (a wonderfully snide Guy Pearce) jeopardizes the possibility of his wearing and keeping the crown by falling in love with flirtatious, twice-divorced socialite Wallis Simpson (Eve Best). After having explored numerous ways to cure him of his debilitating and embarrassing stutter, Bertie and his loyal wife, Elizabeth (the resplendent Helena Bonham Carter), turn to an odd, failed actor, Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (a pitch-perfect Geoffrey Rush), who uses extremely unusual methods that eventually force Bertie to reexamine his childhood while also preparing for a future that could put him on the throne as the country goes to war. Director Tom Hooper (THE DAMNED UNITED, HBO’s JOHN ADAMS miniseries) keeps the tension mounting as Bertie gains more and more public responsibility and his stage fright grows; the scenes between Firth and Rush in Logue’s rather low-rent basement office are thoroughly mesmerizing, a pair of bravura performances built around the slightest mouth twitch from Firth and knowing looks from the craggy-faced Rush. The strong cast also includes Derek Jacobi as Archbishop Cosmo Lang, Jennifer Ehle as Logue’s wife, Myrtle, Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill, Anthony Andrews as Stanley Baldwin, and Claire Bloom as Queen Mary. The only drawback is Alexandre Desplat’s overly melodramatic score, which insists on squeezing unnecessary, treacly emotion from a story where words take center stage.