Pajiba

The flick isn't even remotely of my interest but that was one fine piece of writing.

None of what I just wrote should be taken to indicate that I don't want Colin Firth to get an Oscar. He was excellent in the role. He was robbed last year. But I feel he is the kind of actor who could still make us feel sympathy for him dealing with a debilitating stammer even if he were portrayed realistically instead of some wonderful kind, force for good against the encroaching fascists.

This movie is successful because it's a small story within a much, much larger story. That Churchhill was a mere cameo is testament to the movie's goal in that regard.

"But not Bertie, he’s incorruptible."

I don't know if the film goes so far as to make a moral judgment either way, and perhaps that's part of everybody's beef. I thought he was a little insufferable, to be honest, and sympathetic only insofar as this impediment and hints at his less-then-idyllic childhood. He said some shitty, revealing stuff throughout the movie, so I didn't walk away thinking he was an angel.

I think a slight irk is the appropriate response to the omission (a strategic omission that I think permitted the film to be as small-scale as it was). Doesn't mean the movie's unassailable - it's a historical movie with all its attendant responsibilities - but I don't think the plotline of the movie was at the expense of anything it omitted (if that makes sense). That being said, your everyday English citizen was really, really suffering during the interwar period, and I don't think the film addressed that, either. Citizens were essentially a backdrop to the movie, save the scenes toward the end when they were all listening, enraptured, to KG give his speech.

"pimp and circumstance" Nice.

I recall reading that George V, some time before his death (it certainly couldn't have been afterward), expressed the wish that the succession go to his second son, rather than to David. David was a bit of a shallow womanizer who allowed himself to become dominated by Wallis Simpson (note - he never had kids).

For his father to suggest that the crown and the Empire pass to him, you think there had to be some good in George VI. And not just because he and his wife had proved that they could provide heirs, either.

Now, I'll grant you that the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Windsor) has more than a soupcon of Germanic blood in them to this day. That didn't make them all Nazi sympathizers, of course, any more than my expressed desire to see the rich taxed at 1964 levels (55%) makes me a Communist. Edward VIII was known to be rather openly racist (making disparaging remarks about South Africans, Australians, etc.) and he had good things to say about the Austrian paper-hanger. But then, a lot of people said good things about Hitler in the early Thirties - even Churchill.

Maybe if they had Mel Brooks show up dressed as Hitler, we would have achieved historical accuracy in some measure. Instead, we have a small film about a royal dude with a speech disorder.

Appeasement wasn’t a policy held by the Royal Family only. Joseph Kennedy, for one, was notable in this regard. Yet, we don’t insist that every film about Jack Kennedy cover his notorious father or the role his father played in getting him elected. Politics is a dirty sport.

Up next: “King’s Speech 2 – My BFF Adolph”.

Following on from Mickey's comment, I'd say that appeasement certainly did not seem such a bad idea in the 1930s. It's only with hindsight that we realise it was a fruitless path.

But back then Neville Chamberlain and the British were just recovering from the carnage and horror their generation had witnessed in the trenches of the First World War. It's no wonder they weren't anxious to start a second one.

Also, after the Great Depression, they were hardly in the best position to enter an arms race, so the need for confrontation was best avoided if possible.

It should also be factored in that a fear of a Communist Russia was far greater than a fear of a Fascist Germany and it was thought a good idea at the time, to have a buffer between us and the Reds.

Of course, we all know now what a monster Hitler was. But standing in their shoes back then, it wasn't so black and white.

I...think this piece was thought-through, but terribly overwritten (to the detriment of clarity in several places). As an editor, I'd take my red pen to it.

As a film-goer, I'd say that the audience is intelligent enough to know what the war means. We get it from just one Hitler snippet (which serves the nice double purpose of displaying the threat and contrasting Hitler's facility with speech to Bertie's). If the film took the time to spell out "the Germans are killing Jews and trying to take over all of Europe!" I think we'd find it a little expository, no? That's our shared historical knowledge and context.

As an actor, I'd say that the focus of the script IS where it wants to be - between the 2 men, and between 1 man and his fears. I don't think the other characters come off as caricatures - I think they are *minor* characters, which is what they're supposed to be.

There was some judicious decision-making in the process of creating this film - what to tell, what not to tell, who to focus on, and who merely stands by. I think for once a film team got it right, and limited themselves wisely.

At the end of the movie, I thought: hey, that was formulaic. But I was moved anyway. Because the essential truth is: when the king was called on to make a speech to encourage his nation at war, he overcame his disability and was able to do so. (even though as the credits rolled, I, a cynical American thought: did this speech really mean anything to anyone?)

Interesting piece. But I saw this as as a movie about the man, not the war.

If I'm honest, if this were a completely fictional story, I'd probably be whinging that the war was introduced to up the ante. In my mind, the story wasn't about this man giving a perfect speech, it was about how he overcame all the reasons he couldn't. And, to a lesser degree, his friendship with a man who was basically his exact opposite - a protocol-ignoring, semi-poor and disrespected failed actor from the colonies. If we weren't talking about actual events, I'd have probably rolled my eyes when the war cropped up.

Then again, that history gives the story weight it wouldn't normally have. If we were talking about, say, a car-salesman in Bristol, it would be a very different story. Probably a comedy. Oscars would be unlikely to be mentioned.

I guess that's the crux of the issue. The history gives the story weight, but what's more important - the history, or the story?

(As a side note - I went to a new hairdresser just after seeing the movie, and mentioned it during the usual idle chit-chat.
"Oh!" said the hairdresser, "I didn't know there were kings, I thought they were all queens!"
Me: "Uh, no. There's been plenty of kings in England."
Her: "So, the Queen we have now - is she Queen of America too?"
Me: ....

Really should have taken that as a sign.)

RE monarchs: I know they're already kinda numbered. I guess I need a chart. Surely there's a chart out there somewhere. Because seriously, ya'll have a lot of Georges and Edwards up in there. Until this movie came out, I didn't realize there was a King George in the 20th century. The King George we all know most about over here was that dipshit we got rid of in the late 1700s.

OK, found a chart. Holy crap, there are way more of them than I thought:

http://www.britannia.com/history/h6f.html

Dan, I understand your issues with the film. Yet sometimes you must ignore the mistakes to focus on the message. I know that can be difficult, but as a black man is what I have had to do every time I watch a historical film. Slavery is almost always ignored in period pieces, magical negros and the trustworthy loving black servant used in place of realism often in film. It doesn't bother as much as it did in my film school days. Its something that you live with, because sometimes we have to focus on the inspiring aspects of a persons life. If we were to look at the whole, what would be moving? The negative aspects would take from us cheering for his success in overcoming his challange. I would love to see a film about Bertie overcoming his personal ideas and realizing that the fight against Nazi Germany was something that had to be done for all mankind, but is that the reality? Were Jews respected and loved in Europe after the war? Did England even understand why they were at war? Did the government even know what the plan was for the Jewish population in German controlled lands? If so, would Bertie's sympathies have lasted as long as they did? These are questions that would be wonderful to see in film...but this isn't Schindler's List...it's the Kings Speech. A writer must focus on the story he is telling. Or else the subplots overload the screenplay.

Nice piece.

I felt the film does an incredible job of telling the story of these two individuals (however fictional their portrayals might be) and the relationship between them, but I was just never drawn into the larger scope and historical significance of the events around them. The quiet scenes between the two of them had me riveted, but the rest of it seemed like window dressing and hence kept this film from reaching greatness in my opinion.

It does not seem a good thing that a movie would leave me characterizing the central conflict of World War II as "window dressing," but it was thinly drawn enough that all these quibbles about the film's historical accuracy seem a side note. In a film more comprehensive in its attempt at historicity, I might find the criticism more damning. As it is, it just seems like a higher standard than the film was even attempting.

On a side note about your writing, your description of the D.C. Holocaust Museum vividly brought from memory my own trip there. It was unquestionably one of the most sobering experiences of my life, and your description does it justice.

Hi PaddyDog. It is true; we rarely disagree. I guess the nature of interpreting historical events means it is always going to be open to discussion.

I would agree though that it was the upper classes and business owners that were probably more concerned about Russia. That’s also a fair point about those who volunteered to fight Franco – there was estimated to be two thousand men from the UK joining an international force of 35 to 40 thousand.

Hitchens’ diatribe only serves to illustrate the complexity of what was going on in Europe during that troubling time. To this day there are differing opinions on who did what to whom. Rather than sit in the grandstand shooting holes through what is essentially a simple two-person play, Hitchens should write a screenplay for the definitive film about Churchill, Eddie-8 and Georgie-6. Then we can poke holes at that.

"Was there anything about child abuse in there? Probably should have been. What about abandonment issues? Colonialism? Sexism? Architecture? Metallurgy?"

I'd half composed a comment but this sums it up. To me, it was a film about a man, not a monarch. The historical inaccuracies in the backdrop didn't jar and I only thought of them in passing afterwards.

Also - I would not equate land ownership (and thus a healthy fear of Communism) with upper classes. Hell of a lot more small farms around then which was and is often a subsistence living.