The King’s Speech (***)

Seeing an important personage seeming ordinary is like seeing someone you know on television. Nothing really extraordinary about it, but watching familiar things out of context makes them twice as interesting. And for Americans, royalty itself has no context, which perhaps makes Americans pay more attention to the British monarchy than most other aspects of English culture. In any case, knowing that Prince Albert (Colin Firth) will become King George VI is what makes his chronic stammering especially poignant.

Albert, the second son of George V, neither expected nor desired to rule. He did only because his older brother Edward (Guy Pearce) abdicated in order to marry an American divorcée, a better- known story that’s here relegated to a subplot. But George is the more appealing character; when he reminds his speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) of their unequal status, you sense it’s mostly out of insecurity or tradition, not haughtiness. Logue not only insists on being called Lionel, but on calling his royal patient by the family name “Bertie.” [The historical accuracy of this point has been disputed.] An Australian-born failed actor, he became the prince’s therapist in 1925, following a disastrous speech at Wembley. It was George’s fate to not only become king but to live in the age of radio, when the ability to speak became of increased importance top a public figure. Firth masters the king’s manner of speech, not only the stutter but also the clipped, now-dated accent.

While the film, directed by Tom Hooper (The Damned United, John Adams) holds much the same “behind the scenes” appeal as the equally humanizing portrait The Queen, about George’s daughter, or Young Victoria, about his grandmother, there’s less that’s novel about it. The Queen, for example, has much more to say about the role of the monarchy in the age of democracies. (Both films feature evocative scores by Alexandre Desplat.) This is a story about friendship and overcoming adversity, and once that’s established things go along the lines one expects. It does tickle one to think, watching Albert play with his young daughters, that the younger one will become the now-elderly Queen Elizabeth, or that his wife (Helena Bonham Carter, as winsome as she is bizarre in recent Harry Potter films) turns into the beloved, widowed Queen Mother, who lived until 2002. Of note also are Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler’s sometimes-amusing depictions of many of the techniques that Logue used in his practice. Logue, for example, encouraged swearing, which tended to eliminate the stutter. Seidler (himself a stutterer) has mostly written telemovies (like Come On, Get Happy: The Partridge Family Story), though also 1988’s fine Tucker: The Man and His Dream. At its worst, this is like a very good TV movie, familiar but satisfying.

IMDB link

viewed 1/20/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 1/20–21/11

Beowulf (**3/4)

Ah, how well I remember not reading this back in high school when it, the earliest classic of English literature, was assigned. If only there’d been a movie version. Now there is this, one of a few adaptations in the last decade, but let us not speak of the gloomy, dreadful 13th Warrior (1999), the only other one I’ve seen. Here we have director Robert Zemeckis (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) working from a script by fantasy polymath Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.

This quasi-animated version (enhanced live action) preserves the shell of the ancient story, set in sixth-century Scandinavia, while filling the center with something new. There is the monster Grendel, all right, the one thing I vaguely recalled from class, and his reign of terror upon a king and his people is what sets the story in motion. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is the warrior who answers King Hrothgar’s (Anthony Hopkins) call for a hero. In this telling he is met not only with the beast, who comes looking like a giant man whose skin has been flayed, but by beauty, which looks a lot like what today we might call Angelina Jolie. The tale, then, is of bravery mixed with temptation, which is the new part.

The frame is sturdy, the look shiny and sharp, especially if you get to see the 3-D version, as I did not, and the climax, a one-on-one war of man and beast, rousing. There is one larger-scale battle sequence, but it’s short, and overall the movie’s only mildly action-oriented. What prevents it from being more memorable is that the temptation theme is not well-developed. A tragedy of weakness and redemption seems intended, but as the years skip by we really don’t see its full weight. Epic grandeur is needed, and lacking. Whereas perhaps we are to see Beowulf as a Samson figure succumbing to the charms of Delilah, I saw him more as Bill Clinton succumbing to the charms of Monica Lewinsky.

By no means is the film a failure, or dull. But it lacks the mythic power of 300, a rough analog of heroism and self-sacrifice set in a semi-mythic past.

IMDB link

reviewed 11/30/07