{"id":1373,"date":"2010-12-18T19:00:23","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T02:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=1373"},"modified":"2011-01-12T12:25:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T19:25:26","slug":"the-kings-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/the-kings-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The King’s Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film
\nDirected by Tom Hooper<\/p>\n

Starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham-Carter, Jennifer Ehle<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A great little film about a speech problem and its repair. Of course, the one with the defect was about to become a king, amplifying its significance considerably.<\/strong><\/div>\n

Who knew that King George VI had a speech problem? I didn’t, but now I do, and certainly appreciate the sweet and tasteful rendering of the tale in this small-sized but potent drama. Firth plays the soon-to-be King, the Duke of York, Bertie, who, in his relative youth, has faced the trials of public speaking. To confront the problem, his wife, subtly and warmly played by Helena Bonham-Carter, helps Bertie find Lionel Logue (played beautifully and ironically by Geoffrey Rush) to address the problem. <\/p>\n

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Lionel Logue and his wife Myrtle, 1906<\/small><\/center><\/p>\n

The drama arises from the prince’s continual bucking of the process and the regularity of his return to it. Firth does a nice job of conveying a vulnerable character marked equally by traits of determination and hauteur. Their mix, in the end, provides Logue, a commoner with an artful determination of his own, the perfect foil. Logue does everything he can to reduce the relationship to a human one from a professional one, while, at the same time, maintaining an impeccable professional stance. Logue takes a beating from the prince, but continues to offer his expert services. It’s a little like “An Officer and a Gentleman<\/em>” (the 1982 film starring Richard Gere) in reverse: in that film, Gere’s character, Mayo, a cadet in a naval officers’ training program, takes a brutal emotional beating from Lou Gossett, Jr. who plays a Sergeant determined to kick Mayo into shape. Here, Rush, as the quasi-Sergeant, cannot risk the same brutality, but offers his own variant of devil-may-care-ness, so that the prince is forced to lay down his princely elevation to face himself and his own demons.<\/p>\n

Winston Churchill, who appears as a character in the film, also had a stuttering problem, and, as well, a lisp. He went on to become a noted orator and famously claimed “My impediment is no hindrance.”<\/p>\n

See Churchill’s Speech Impediment Was Stuttering.<\/small><\/strong><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The direction and acting are first rate. This is a film that could have easily become a trivial period piece. Instead it is a moving drama on a small scale, surprisingly evoking a touching sense from the interactions of the prince and his wife and their rumpled and common, but masterful, guide. <\/p>\n

It is worth noting that Jennifer Ehle, who plays here the fairly minor role of Logue’s wife, Myrtle, starred brilliantly in Tom Stoppard’s trilogy about nineteenth century Russian political thinkers, The Coast of Utopia<\/em>, at Lincoln Center Theatre in New York in 2007 which I had, at the time, the pleasure of seeing in a superb, marathon (twelve hour long) staging.<\/p>\n

Mark Logue, Lionel’s and Myrtle’s son, wrote the book on which the film is based:<\/small><\/p>\n

The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy<\/a>\"\"<\/strong><\/div>\n

– BADMan <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film Directed by Tom Hooper Starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham-Carter, Jennifer Ehle A great little film about a speech problem and its repair. Of course, the one with the defect was about to become a king, amplifying its significance considerably. Who knew that King George VI had a speech problem? I didn’t, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-movies","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1373"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}