The American Spectator : The King's Speech

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The King's Speech

By James Bowman on 2.4.11 @ 6:04AM

Maybe here is a heroism we can believe in again.

Although I very much enjoyed Tom Hooper's sepia-tinted return to the 1930s, The King's Speech, I was also conscious throughout of something very odd about the movie. It has to do with but is not limited to the fact that King George VI (Colin Firth), like all British monarchs since the Stuarts (or perhaps George III, so far as Americans are concerned), was a pretty peripheral historical figure to begin with, while the film's pathographical aspect -- the poor man suffered from a stammer -- is also not exactly epic in scale. In the catalogue of human misfortunes, even more severe speech impediments than his would not be numbered among the top ten, nor yet the top hundred and ten, probably, even for someone like the King whose fate it is to have to make public speeches.

The oddness does not end there. There is something faintly ridiculous about attempting to excite our pity for a royal personage in the cultural absence of the kind of tragic stature enjoyed by a King Oedipus or a King Lear -- even if his fate were (as it is not) a tragic one. Moreover, in comparison to the world-historical significance of the outbreak of the Second World War, which is the film's context and which is represented at its climax, the king's affliction hardly looks like, well, a very big deal. The film works hard to suggest that the fate of the empire and, indeed, the free world depends on the King's fluency but, really, we know it did not and could not. Yet Mr. Firth's portrayal of the king, together with Geoffrey Rush's of Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who helps him, is so powerful that while we watch we are scarcely conscious of these difficulties -- which, after all, the film has set for itself.

There is yet a further problem. As he is portrayed here, and (I believe) in real life, the king would have loathed the idea of this film's appeal to our sympathy on his behalf. But in a way this weakness is also the movie's strength. Just as it portrays "Bertie" (as the future king was known to his family) as someone who hated the very idea of becoming king when his much more glamorous older brother the Prince of Wales (Guy Pearce) -- who became, briefly, Edward VIII -- unexpectedly abdicated in order to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, so it is itself a paradoxical paean to the human side of a man who rigidly suppressed his human feelings out of a sense of duty to his country. That was something that a great many of his fellow countrymen (and ours) were to have to do too over the next six years and something that today's audiences must wonder if we can ever do again, even at our most need -- which, pray God, will never come again.

That's why, nearly 60 years after his death, George VI is still able to encourage his admirers to believe again in the unlikeliest of heroes. That, I think, is the appeal of the film to a lot of people. Charles Moore of the London Daily Telegraph put it best, I think -- and, by the way, offered a compelling apologia for monarchy itself -- when he wrote:

Never before have I seen so clearly depicted just how awful it is to be the British monarch. And, since it is a role which, as Bertie himself points out early on, one cannot choose, the rest of us feel terribly sorry for the person on whom the Crown descends. Whenever republicans attack the "privilege" which surrounds royalty their complaints seldom win much support because anyone with an ounce of imagination can see how frightful the life is, even if (partly because?) you are surrounded by what critics love to call "flunkeys." This helps explain why the sense of duty is so important. Almost everyone else in public life is visibly keen to get on, trying to survive, trying to be promoted, trying to kick aside rivals, trying to accumulate power, honours and money. It is important to have at least one person at the top who doesn't really want to be there. It is the precise opposite of Hitler's terrible will to power, against which George VI had to rally his country. The British people came to love their King precisely because he clearly had no ambition, and yet he did the job all the same, because he knew he must.

This view of the film makes an interesting contrast with Anthony Lane's in the New Yorker, who experiences it not as a celebration but as a critique of some of these same qualities, together with "all that is clenched and misted-over in the English character." Much of the picture, he writes, "girds itself in the trimmings of decorum, and revels in the restitution of order, as required by devotees of costume drama; on the other hand, what Logue uncovers, in his sessions with the future king, is something rotten in the state of England, which nothing, not even Australia, can mend."

Surely, here we must have the secret of the film's success: that it manages simultaneously to appeal to both sides in the cultural wars that have raged in Britain and America, as elsewhere in the West, since the 1960s: both, that is, to the believers in relaxes and those fighting a presumably doomed rearguard action on behalf of braces. Litterateurs will recognize the allusion to William Blake's enigmatical dictum: "Curse braces, bless relaxes," which can also be read two ways. Is it, in other words, braces that are to be cursed and relaxes blessed? Or are we instead to recognize the bracing effects of the curse alongside the entropic relaxation of mere blessing? The answer, as everything about Blake requires us to insist, is yes.

In the same way, the PBS "Masterpiece Classics" series Downton Abbey ends with simultaneous disasters for the family of the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and the world at large. The latter disaster is of course the outbreak of World War I, while the former is said to be a result of the fact that someone "must say what I think." To this the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith, pointedly replies: "I don't know why. Nobody else does." There, too, I believe, contemporary audiences must feel at once our morally relaxed culture's contempt for the inevitable hypocrisies of life in the highly structured and even more highly strictured world of pre-1914 Britain and a kind of grudging admiration for those who felt, for reasons we can hardly imagine anymore, that they had to live according to its rules.

Maybe the relative triviality of the dramatic conflict represented to us in The King's Speech -- which is or ought to be accentuated by contrast with the outbreak of a World War -- actually makes the king's heroism seem more real. That, paradoxically (the guy is a king after all!) makes it more accessible to us, surfeited as we are by a cinematic diet of merely fantastical superheroes -- like something we ourselves might be capable of. Maybe here is a heroism we can believe in again. All this is a roundabout way of saying that The King's Speech is good, yes, but good compared to what? Compared to the other Academy Award nominees as Best Picture for instance. I hope it is also, apart from anything else, a reminder to us playful postmoderns of what a long way just a little bit of reality can still take us.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (47) | Leave a comment

Appleby| 2.4.11 @ 6:16AM

Everyone who has seen this movie, and I include myself, has raved about it -- because it shows someone rising to the occasion, shouldering his burden and doing what he has to do, although he found it a burden and wished the *cup would pass from him*. Instead of whining, pointing fingers, hiding behind other people, and behaving like his brother did -- he behaved the way Dads used to behave. He shouldered his responsibilities, for love of family and country -- and because this is what men do. So did our fathers, if we were born in the 1950s especially, and so did our mothers for that matter. And so did we. Our fathers were imperfect but they were there, doing what they had to do regardless of whether they wanted to do it or not. And we loved them, imperfections and all, because we recognized how hard their road was and that we could depend on them regardless.

It is wonderful to see a man act like a man, a husband and a father, and be celebrated for doing what men used to believe was their manly duty.

Neil Welton| 2.4.11 @ 8:50AM

Well said Appleby. Even though I was born in the 1970s, my father could be described as Victorian or perhaps Edwardian. He showed no affection to me at all but I knew deep down that he shouldered all his responsibilities, did what he had to do, and I also recognised how hard his own life had been. As I grew older I just developed a very deep and profound respect for him. I never told him this in his lifetime - but as his son, not only did I love him, but I revered and worshipped him.

alice moore| 2.4.11 @ 9:23AM

Hear, Hear for your review of The King's Speech! There are many parallels to our time. I too liked the theme of a father, who happened to be King, shouldering the burden. The fact that "Bertie" was an otherwise unremarkable person, made it all the better. This is in contrast to the world of today.

I think Mr. Bowman missed that very important point ; in his review.

The Bishop| 2.4.11 @ 10:12AM

Appleby, great points, and I couldn't agree more. I also have to say that Geoffrey Rush's character's ability to see his duty and overcome the class strictures to behave as a friend and patriot were very warming in this film. What makes it stand out is the contrast in the current "easy" culture. One thing I notice when my wife and I saw it was that the audience was made up of our age group (for the most part) - in our 60s. What does that say?

beebop| 2.5.11 @ 7:24AM

Sadly? I think it says that they prefer the 3-d glasses crap that lulls them into the state they prefer -- not needing to think and allowing others to control their meagre, pathetic and purposeless existances.

Unger| 2.6.11 @ 3:00AM

Was it a matinée? Perhaps all the youngsters were at work and school. Or maybe they BitTorented it.

Anthony| 2.4.11 @ 10:28AM

Well said Appleby. It was a wonderful and uplifting movie with supurb acting all around.
These were indeed men who understood their rolls and shouldered their responsibilities as best they could, limitations and all.

idalily| 2.4.11 @ 11:20AM

Well said. I'd like to add that I think the story was also (like most good stories) about facing one's personal demons, and through courage and sustained effort, overcoming them and coming out victorious on the other side. No whining, no blaming, just doing what must be done. It's called courage and it's what makes great leadership. I was struck, sadly, by how lacking our current leaders seem to be in both courage and leadership ability.

Alan Brooks| 2.4.11 @ 11:49AM

The English Crown is a burden, while in Monaco, just for instance, the throne is a blessing. The English are the 'best' IMO; followed by Italians,
Italians are no pushovers-- mess with them and you sleep with the fishes.
Too bad we all can't be "made" men.

mames| 2.4.11 @ 3:58PM

Oh what a burden these British parasites must shoulder. :) Save me the enoblement of an inbred family that does not have the integrity to remove themselves from the public dole and get real jobs where shouldering burdens is REAL. I detest the whole lot and there is nothing sympathetic about them; nor the pathetic "subjects" who support them.

Alan Brooks| 2.5.11 @ 1:05AM

"family that does not have the integrity"

Speaking of families,Italians who are "made" have integrity, the integrity to make you an offer you can't refuse. If that doesn't work, Luca Brasi comes over to give you some free chiropractic adjustments-- the hard kind.

Deborah D| 2.4.11 @ 3:59PM

Beautifully said, Appleby. When my husband and I went to see it (we almost never go to the movies), the audience so enjoyed it that we all applauded at the end. I believe it's because the audience was made up of folks my age (58) or older. People who might not remember WWII, but do remember the quiet strength of men such as you describe. Fathers who grew up in the Depression only to be burdened with the responsibility of fighting for the free world. We owe them -- those who saved us from Nazism and Communism -- to carry on the fight in the 21st Century. We also owe it to our children, so that maybe they'll watch a movie one day and think ... look what our parents did, and applaud us for it. God bless, all.

Alan Brooks| 2.5.11 @ 11:38PM

"shouldering his burden and doing what he has to do,"

"his"; "he"? Good thing for you you aren't a guy.
HOW CONVENIENT for you.

Benchwarmer| 2.7.11 @ 12:59AM

Bravo Appleby. I stand behind every word of your magnificent first Post!

Robbins Mitchell| 2.4.11 @ 6:17AM

I was pleased to notice in the film that George VI could cuss like a sailor when the occasion called for it...befitting an officer in the Royal Navy

FREE bee| 2.4.11 @ 6:32AM

AS the London/DC New World Order 'eugenics
friendly' capstone foundations and NGO's cabal
moves toward some speed bumps as the agenda moves along, and as the
Globalist RED China sellout becomes all to
apparent ---even for the FOX News syphers
time for a bit ot Tavistock Institute
'perception management'.

D| 2.4.11 @ 7:03AM

Surely Bowman might give one line of credit to Mr. Firth's characterization and acting.

Tom| 2.4.11 @ 9:42AM

Did you actually read the article?

"Yet Mr. Firth's portrayal of the king, together with Geoffrey Rush's of Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who helps him, is so powerful that while we watch we are scarcely conscious of these difficulties..."

That is hardly faint praise.

Doctor Right| 2.4.11 @ 10:28AM

Why over-analyze it?

It's an interesting story, and well-acted.

Rick V.| 2.4.11 @ 12:27PM

Thank you, Doctor. Perhaps Mr. Bowman is paid by the word. Or syllable, or historic reference.

DesertFlower| 2.4.11 @ 6:53PM

Indeed! Give it a rest, Mr. Bowman. Uplifting story, well-acted... the end.

David| 2.4.11 @ 11:21AM

To bad the movie isnt true. The King got his lessons back in 1923-25, when he first became Prince of Wales. But I am always in favor of ignoring the facts, for a good yarn.

ConantheContrarian| 2.4.11 @ 12:01PM

Bertie wasn't the Prince of Wales; David was.

ConantheContrarian| 2.4.11 @ 12:04PM

Fake, but accurate

Michael| 2.4.11 @ 12:51PM

When was the last time there was a movie about duty and honor? "The Alamo" (1960)? That is how little Hollywood thinks about those subjects. Also, speaking of "Masterpiece Theature", the King and his wife were the subjects of one film in 2004 called, "Burtie and Lisabeth". It tells about their life together, it also was the first movie to open fire on Edward VIII and show him for who he really was. In one scene, Edward says something to the King. I had a cold at the time, but I wanted to stand up and cheer!! By all means head to the library and get a copy, or ask if they can get it via library loan.

Seek| 2.4.11 @ 1:13PM

Actually, there have been a few hundred if you've been paying attention. You can start with the remake of "The Alamo," which came out in 2004.

Appleby| 2.4.11 @ 2:19PM

Name some other ones; most of what I have seen advertised lately has been crude, dirty, violent or based on a video game. In fact, the entire panoply of "coming attractions" that preceded the showing of "The King's Speech" I attended was poppycock and rubbish. (As someone mentioned, the audience at the showing I attended was 50+, and I wondered what the others thought of the trash being touted before the show.)

Deborah D| 2.4.11 @ 4:07PM

Oh, Appleby!! You are so correct! I actually posted on my FB status that The King's Speech is worth all the crap you have to sit through before the movie. They were advertising that awful MTV show "Skins" about teenagers and sex and drugs and alcohol. It was complete degradation and kiddie porn. I was appalled. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. Many advertisers have pulled their ads from the awful show. I hope it has died a well-deserved death.

Derek Leaberry| 2.4.11 @ 4:16PM

Actually Sgt. Hulka explains duty and honor to Private Winger in "Stripes" 1981.

Seek| 2.4.11 @ 4:20PM

One of the all-time great speeches in cinema, if I do say so. Like the comedies of Judd Apatow ("Knocked Up," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"), "Stripes" is at once vulgar and gloriously right-wing.

Occam's Tool| 2.16.11 @ 5:11PM

Yes, and it is an awesome speech. Winger is mocking soldiering, and Hulka tells him he's full of it, right before taking off his hat, letting Winger take a shot at him, and then smashing him down with one shot to the gut.

Al Adab| 2.4.11 @ 2:50PM

Courage, as I often told my sons, is not the absense of fear but rather is found in facing and overcoming that fear. To do what one must in the face of fear is Courage.

Deborah D| 2.4.11 @ 4:03PM

Love that, Al! One of my favorite sayings is, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers." So true.

Al Adab| 2.4.11 @ 5:17PM

Thanks Deb, I'll remember that one and pass it along, often.

Paul Windels| 2.4.11 @ 4:02PM

I enjoyed the movie. However, it must be noted that it contained some serious historical errors. While in hindsight it WAS a good thing that EVIII abdicated and GVI was king during the war, concern about the Nazis had absolutely nothing to do with the abdication. What concerned the powers that be (Baldwin in particular) was the immorality of marrying a divorcee (considered adultry under CofE doctrine at the time) and the general instability of EVIII. Moreover, Baldwin certainly did not regret his appeasement policy at the time that he resigned.

The portrayal of Churchill is an outright fraud. Whereas the movie portrays Churchill as opposing EVIII, in fact he supported EVIII during the abdication crisis, and GVI remained suspicious of Churchill for that reason up to the time that he was forced to name him Prime Minister. Moreover, the actor portraying Churchill makes it seem as if he were a perpetual curmudgeon when in fact Churchill was so charming in person that his enemies had a hard time hating him.

Finally, even a sartorial error. I'll eat my hat if the Duke of York gave a formal speech in London in 1925 wearing a lounge suit and a soft collar. It would either have been a military uniform or a cutaway.

Derek Leaberry| 2.4.11 @ 4:14PM

Right. Churchill was about the last politician in Britain defending Edward VIII in December 1936. And in May 1940, George VI clearly preferred Lord Halifax to replace Neville Chamberlain. It was Labour that insisted on Churchill as a Coalition Prime Minister.

Paul Windels| 2.5.11 @ 8:57AM

There were a few others, but nobody of Churchill's stature.

Clint| 2.4.11 @ 6:50PM

K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy,
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore;
When the m-m-m-moon shines,
Over the c-c-c-cowshed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.

Paul Windels| 2.5.11 @ 8:52AM

An old favorite of my mother's. Glad someone else likes it too!

jolizoom| 2.4.11 @ 9:27PM

It is important to have at least one person at the top who doesn't really want to be there. It is the precise opposite of Hitler's terrible will to power, against which George VI had to rally his country. The British people came to love their King precisely because he clearly had no ambition, and yet he did the job all the same, because he knew he must.

Mike Pence, anyone?

Frisbee| 2.4.11 @ 9:35PM

I like Mike!

Brian John Murphy| 2.5.11 @ 3:11AM

I admired George VI long before the movie came out. He had a sense of duty about the monarchy that was shaped by the national experience of the First World War, when so many British men had to face unspeakable horrors in the performance of their duty.
Edward VIII chose personal happiness over the duty he owed his country to serve as king and resented the fact that he could not have both the throne and Mrs. Simpson. "Bertie," who would have liked nothing better than to have lived out his life away from the spotlight, faced his duties as king.
One of those duties was not to make himself, and thus the throne, an object of ridicule when the country needed the unifying influence of its monarchy. I'm glad good King George is getting a bit of recognition for having done his duty.

Tony in Central PA| 2.5.11 @ 3:34PM

This was a very good movie. It didn't try to be too large. And even though it did involve many famous people at a critical time in history, it really came down to one man, his family and his friend.
I think people today might not be able to understand the mind of the average British subject in the 1930's and why it was important for them to hear from their king as the Nazis rolled over Poland. People mistakenly assume that democracy is an unavoidable and irrevocable development of governing that has been with us for a very long time and always will. In the 1930's, it hadn't been that long since the monarchy really ruled Britain.

gilbert| 2.6.11 @ 12:29AM

i kneel in respect to the readers of the american spectator. i just watched the senior editor of american spectator panel on the show "real time with bill maher."

fox news regulars and other paranoid conservatives urinate at the thought of being on this show. but the amspec SENIOR editor was on this liberal show. that's the kind of power your party needs to start showing to the world in order to balance it back to what you think is appropriate.

that's all i'm saying....

Benchwarmer| 2.7.11 @ 1:19AM

I absolutely loved this film. The chemistry between Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth is better than any two actors I saw through all of 2010. I loved that the movie had me so emotionally involved with it's characters (particularly King George VI) and looked at them with sympathy and compassion. I loved that the movie had so much affection for the common practices and mannerisms of people living in the era it is based, instead of sneering at it's character's world with a modernistic eye (I believe Sofia Coppola did this in her film MARIE ANTOINETTE). I loved the brilliant exchanges such as:

Elizabeth: "My husband is required to speak publicly."
Lionel: "Perhaps he should change jobs."
Elizabeth: "He can't."
(beat)
Lionel (ironically): "Indentured servitude?"
Elizabeth: "Something of that nature."

And my favourite:

Lionel (seeing Albert smoke): "Don't do that"
Albert: "I'm sorry?"
Lionel: "Sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you."
Albert: "My Physicians say it relaxes the throat."
Lionel: "They're idiots."
Albert: "They've all been knighted."
Lionel: "Makes it official then."

This is a great film, and it came very close to being my favourite of 2010, only very slightly behind INCEPTION. A person I know said she "felt it to be a little overdone in simple story line positivity." But not all great films have to have a difficult and complex story to them. Some films (like CHARIOTS OF FIRE and APOLLO 13) work despite their simple story line positivity. A great film this is. A masterpiece, period!