Movie Review - The King's Speech

You might think that a story about royalty would leave little for us commoners to relate to.  But this King of England has an impediment that I think all of us have experienced, and I don't mean a stutter.  The core of his suffering is insecurity, being uncomfortable in his own skin.  Although an heir to the throne of England, a man with title and every privilege, he lacked all belief in himself.  For King George VI, this hidden lifelong fear is made painfully public every time he tries to speak.  We later learn that his stuttering started in childhood with the abuse of a nanny, and then solidified with the early death of a sibling and constant teasing by his surviving brother. 

What gives this movie it's core is the unlikely friendship that slowly develops between the would-be king (Colin Firth) and his speech therapist Lionel (Geoffrey Rush).  It's great watching these two actors play off one another, with Colin playing the troubled, pathetic noble and Geoffrey perfect as the eccentric self-made therapist.  We later learn that the king had no friends until meeting Lionel, and with his personality you have to wonder if he ever would have found friendship if this patient, humble man didn't enter his life.  Surely every other doctor he would have seen would have let their pride get in the way to become "the man that cured the King of England."

For a movie primarily about a man's speech impediment and his striving to overcome it, it's surprisingly engaging.  You see the everyman in the King and can't help but root for him as an underdog, which is not something you expect from a man of privilege.  When leaving the theater, the one "miss" that  I saw for the film was how it used the backdrop of the impending second world war.  I thought the grim reality of what another global war would mean to the King's country was only used as a plot device to set up his big speech.  But now I think that maybe the insulation the movie exhibits from the events of the "real world" is an accurate depiction of the life of a royal, especially in modern times.  At the end of the film, when the King has his triumphant speech announcing his Empire's entrance into WWII, you realize how a King's moment of personal victory, can quickly be humbled by the dire events of the day.