The King's Speech

7 May 2018

The King’s Speech 2010

• Director: Tom Hooper
• Based on book: no
• Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Gambon, Guy Pearce, Claire Bloom, Eve Best, Timothy Spall
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Colin Firth – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Genova, Mamma Mia, Then She Found Me, Nanny McPhee, Love Actually, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Black Adder, My Life So Far, Shakespeare in Love, A Thousand Acres, Fever Pitch
• Geoffrey Rush – The Book Thief, Pirates of the Caribbean, Elizabeth the Golden Age, Ned Kelly, The Banger Sisters, Frida, Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Les Misérables, Shine
• Helena Bonham Carter – Suffragette, Cinderella, The Lone Ranger, Les Misérables, Great Expectations, Dark Shadows, Life’s Too Short, Harry Potter, Toast, Alice in Wonderland, Enid, Terminator Salvation, Conversations with Other Women, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Big Fish, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Twelfth Night, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Howards End, Hamlet, Lady Jane, A Room with a View
• Derek Jacobi – Last Tango in Halifax, Vicious, Cinderella, My Week with Marilyn, Doctor Who, Gosford Park, Gladiator, Hamlet, Dead Again, Henry V, Hamlet, Richard II, I Claudius
• Jennifer Ehle – Contagion, The River King, Sunshine, Backbeat
• Michael Gambon – The Hollow Crown, Fortitude, Quirke, The Quartet, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, The Book of Eli, Brideshead Revisited, Cranford, Amazing Grace, Being Julia, Gosford Park, Longitude, Sleepy Hollow, Mary Reilly
• Guy Pearce – Genius, Prometheus, The Road, Factory Girl, A Slipping Down Life, The Adventures of Pricilla Queen of the Desert
• Claire Bloom – Doctor Who, The Life and Death of King John, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Red Sky at Morning, Charly
• Eve Best – Antony and Cleopatra (on stage at the Globe), Much Ado about Nothing, Shackleton
• Timothy Spall - Mr Turner, The Love Punch, Harry Potter, Ginger and Rosa, Alice in Wonderland, Sweeney Todd, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, My House in Umbria, All or Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Topsy-Turvy, Our Mutual Friend, Hamlet, Spender, Life is Sweet, Gothic, Quadrophenia
• Why? Good film. Good cast.
• Seen: Once before. Now 5 May with Hal and his brother and sister-in-law EB and SB 

       For an anti-monarchist I certainly watch a lot of films about kings and queens.

       The prince, soon to be King George VI of England (Firth) has a terrible stammer. It’s painful for him, for his wife Elizabeth (Bonham Carter), the future Queen Mother, for everybody and for the viewers. Speech therapy, primitive and sadistic, does no good.

       Elizabeth is an enterprising, haughty and stubborn woman. She coerces and manipulates her husband and the unorthodox and controversial speech therapist Lional Logue (Rush) to start working together.

       Rigid royalty meets outspoken irreverent democratic radical.

       It’s funny and deeply moving. Rush, Firth and Bonham Carter are so good it brings tears to one’s eyes.

       If anything, this film makes me even more anti-monarchist. What a barbaric system. For that and more this film is

5* of 5