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| The King's Speech |
Everywhere.
On the tongue.
In the soul.
Alienating.
Discouraging.
Yet, the inevitable comes.
Regardless.
How many people do you know who stutter? I don’t mean the verbal kind, necessarily. I mean those people who start something, then stop. Then start again, then stop. They never quite get their lives going, never quite commit to any one thing, never quite rise above the fears preventing their ascent to higher things.
Last week, I saw the Oscar-nominated film, The King’s Speech. I’ve hesitated to review it because I was not sure how I felt about it. Is it as great a film as depicted in the popular press?
It comes off very much like a Masterpiece program on PBS. It’s a classic rise-above-one’s-shortcomings film, a thematic genre at which British filmmakers excel. Its hero, who would become King George VI, rises above a vocal stutter to take his rightful place in history.
I hesitated to write this review because something nagged at me. The film could not be this pedestrian. It could not be so seemingly bland a Masterpiece program, except one with great actors, including Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter, and a great director, Tom Hooper, topping the bill, could it?
And so, I puzzled and puzzled until my puzzler was sore.
It seems this film’s theme is not so much about a man overcoming a vocal stutter as one overcoming a lifestyle of stuttering: one that prevents the personal expression of a human soul. Perhaps that symbolism even extends to the Chamberlain parliament of the era, with its many attempts at appeasing rather than crushing the threat that would soon consume the world?
Bertie, the nickname used by the royal family for its younger son, has arranged his life so it makes no statement of any kind. His life is guarded, it is essentially without expression. That’s not to say he does not feel or enjoy things. For example, though not favored by older royals, he enjoys American jazz music. However, he listens to it on a gramophone at low volume, in a small sitting room in his palace, in private, hiding his joy from the rest of the world.
Though he is affected by geopolitics and political economy, diligently reading the newspaper and lamenting the plight of Depression-era Britains, he makes no personal statement, either in words or actions, to engage or arrest the suffering of others. He has made himself into a guarded ghost, hidden from life, sharing nothing of his considerable wisdom with the world.
Except, life will not let Bertie be. He has a threatening date with destiny, one brought on by an obstinate, profligate brother (who becomes King Edward VII and then resigns to continue a lifestyle right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel), and a peculiar, loud German, with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, and the power of dramatic, extemporaneous speech. To rise to the needs of his people and allies, Bertie must rise above his own stutter— not merely the stutter of his tongue, but the stutter of his soul.
The question is does the film really work? If this is the thematic message, does the film readily bring it out? I’m not sure. Usually, themes emerge easily for me from fiction and always have. This theme seems deeply buried. Despite the use of many visual metaphors, like the ever thinning fog or therapist Logue's suggestion that Bertie glue the upper wing onto a World War I model airplane, one being built by Logue’s son and something his father, the King, would never allow, I didn’t get the meaning at first.
It turns out I am still a bit puzzled.
Is it a good film? Yes. Is it a great film? Possibly. However, for as accessibly played as the characters were, Bertie’s character remains somewhat remote and guarded to me. The man has a full-blown threshold moment, literally crossing the doorway from one era in his and the nation’s life to another; yet, despite all the handshakes (including Winston Churchill as played brilliantly by Timothy Spall) as he walks through a number of palace rooms, I don’t feel that moment of triumph.
Perhaps that has to do with the war that followed? Though Bertie’s personal victory and its national impact were monumental, bolstering a terrified nation, they signaled the beginning of the hell to come. Perhaps that is it. Perhaps it was Europe’s perpetual stutter, it’s, until then, unending wars of conquest and aggression, which disallow my sense of joy at Bertie’s triumph.
That is not the scriptwriter’s or filmmaker’s fault. That is mine. Perhaps in this regard, I must overcome a stutter of my own. Perhaps the best films are those not at first accessible, those that take a bit of time to consider, those for which the fog must first lift so we can see what lies within?
--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.
The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.
