The King's Speech

I've been going on and on lately about the new version of True Grit, and will continue to do so.  As a connoisseur of all things Western, movies, books, travel, etc., I think it's one of the best and an overdue and welcome addition to the history of Western movies.  When the Oscar nominations came out, I was thrilled to see that it garnered ten nominations.  Hopefully it would win at least a couple, maybe even Best Picture.

The only movie that received more nominations, and maybe more Oscar buzz was The King's Speech, a British period piece about the struggles King George VI had with his speech impediment.  I had never known about this story from history, but love a good British movie.  My wife and I just finished watching the first season on Downton Abbey on PBS Masterpiece Classic last Sunday night, so we were going through British movie withdrawal.  Harriet came up with the idea of going to see The King's Speech last night, and it was fantastic.

You can tell from the first couple of minutes that the movie was going to be special, with the music, the detail and most of all with Colin Firth's amazing performance as this tortured man.  It's hard for "commoners" such as ourselves to find sympathy with the royals, but this man Bertie, also known as King George VI, struggled all his life with the demons of growing up scared, repressed, timid and underconfident.  The crisis reared its ugly head when the radio came into being, requiring the royals to appear over the "wireless", giving speeches and goodwill messages to the people of Britain and the world.  With a terrible speech impediment, this was horrible news for Bertie.

Without giving the movie away, I have to say this is an incredibly moving film that I would recommend to all.  The R rating comes from the fact that Bertie and his speech pathologist, Lionel Logue, use curse words to help Bertie be able to speak more freely and confidently.  Those instances of cursing are the entire reason for the R rating.  No violence, no nudity, no carousing, nothing more than the cursing and the themes of the movie concerning family crises and impending war.

I mention this in a Christian blog because I think the movie is very cathartic, very purging for anyone who struggles with something deep down inside, such as the king's stuttering.  The church plays a role in the movie, since the king is the head of the English church, since Bertie's brother abdicates the throne due to his marrying against the church's teachings and wishes, since the pivotal coronation scene takes place in Westminster Abbey, and since the Archbishop of Canterbury is one of the main characters in the film (although he doesn't exactly prove to be a very positive character).  Christian or not explicitly, the themes of The King's Speech are very Christian at their core.  If you can stand to hear the cursing, which comes off hilariously in this movie, go see it and fell the inner triumph of Bertie's coming to grips with his problem.