The King’s Speech

The piano refrain that opens The King’s Speech tells you to expect a film that prizes respectabil­i­ty above all else. And yet almost imper­cep­ti­bly, some­thing shifts in Tom Hooper’s peri­od comedy.

As its awk­ward com­po­si­tion accen­tu­ates the sti­fling con­fines of a coun­try in sta­sis, you realise you’re watch­ing not just one of the most enter­tain­ing British films in years, but one of the most intrigu­ing, too.

In 1936, Hitler was demon­strat­ing the might of the mod­ern Ger­man army at the Nurem­berg parades. In Britain, a com­pla­cent empire was defined by the emp­ty pageantry of its roy­al fam­i­ly. With the death of King George V, his eldest son, Edward (a superb cameo from Guy Pearce), was crowned.

But behind the scenes, trou­ble was brew­ing. Par­lia­ment refused to accept the new king’s mar­riage to divorced Amer­i­can socialite Wal­lis Simp­son, and Edward abdi­cat­ed from the throne.

Hoop­er bril­liant­ly shows us the human side of this con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis by fram­ing it against the sto­ry of Edward’s younger broth­er, Albert (Col­in Firth). Known to his friends as ​‘Bertie’, the prince inher­it­ed a Gor­dian Knot of emo­tion­al issues from his dom­i­neer­ing father, which man­i­fest­ed them­selves as a debil­i­tat­ing stammer.

With the wire­less chang­ing the nature of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and the role of the roy­al fam­i­ly under intense scruti­ny at a time of social unrest, Bertie was thrust into a spot­light he was ill-equipped to face. Both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly, the puta­tive king lacked a voice.

Enter upstart Aus­tralian speech ther­a­pist Lionel Logue (Geof­frey Rush). Approached by the future Queen Moth­er (Hele­na Bon­ham Carter) to cure her hus­band, he becomes one half of a hilar­i­ous odd-cou­ple com­e­dy that also has some­thing sim­ple yet pro­found to say about the country’s nation­al iden­ti­ty at a trans­for­ma­tive moment in its history.

Firth, Rush and Bon­ham Carter fore­ground both the com­e­dy and the human­i­ty in David Seidler’s script, with Bon­ham Carter in par­tic­u­lar illu­mi­nat­ing the film with the small touch­es and deft ges­tures she shares with her strick­en husband.

It’s quite cosy, a bit tooth­less and fun­da­men­tal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. But The King’s Speech is per­sua­sive pre­cise­ly because of the affec­tion and gen­eros­i­ty it offers its pro­tag­o­nists. Would more of Edward’s rogu­ish spir­it make it a bold­er film? Per­haps. Would it be as cap­ti­vat­ing? Unlikely.