New light through old windows

According to Hollywood lore, the Screen Actors Guild Awards is a precursor to the Academy Awards. If that were the case, then The King’s Speech — which nabbed the best-actor trophy and a second honor for its overall cast — is bound to walk home with a clutch of Oscar statuettes come February 27. 

The British period drama’s success at the SAGs — not to mention its triumph at the Golden Globes — comes amid mounting hysteria over the upcoming wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. But The King’s Speech goes beyond our apparent fascination with royalty and, in fact, demystifies it.

For once she wasn’t weird: Helena Bonham-Carter was pitch-perfect as Elizabeth, down to her Received Pronunciation.

Set in the 1930s, when England was facing a threat from Nazi Germany and political turmoil at home, the film zeroes in on Prince Albert (Colin Firth), Duke of York and the second son of King George V. Paralyzed by a terrible stammer, he consults — together with his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) — an eccentric speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), whom he fights at every turn. As if the public speeches and radio addresses he must deliver weren’t enough, his older brother, David (Guy Pearce), abdicates the throne and adds to the pressure.

There’s a reason Colin Firth — who once said he was “increasingly lusted after by people beyond pensionable age” — has become the bookies’ favorite: The King’s Speech brought out strengths that earlier projects hadn’t elicited. While his portrayal of a gay American lecturer in last year’s A Single Man showed his willingness to evolve from mere movie presence to major acting force, his turn in Tom Hooper’s artful monarchy saga takes things to a whole new level. Firth’s Bertie, balancing Anglo-Saxon self-restraint with a low-watt look in his eyes, makes his performance in Girl With a Pearl Earring seem stockbrokerish by contrast. The 50-year-old has certainly come a long way from playing Mark Darcy — reindeer sweater and all — in Bridget Jones’ Diary.  

Like My Fair Lady in reverse: An unorthodox Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) helps the aristocratic Bertie (Colin Firth) overcome his speech impediment.

I’ve always been intrigued by the old-world charm of royal-themed period pieces, from The Queen and Young Victoria to Showtime’s The Tudors, and I assumed The King’s Speech would be just that: an easy-on-the-eye nostalgic romp. I didn’t expect it to be funny, clever and inspirational, which owing to a carefully paced script, it definitely was. Based on a true story, The King’s Speech was like new light shining through old windows; I even found myself cheering, laughing and on the verge of sobbing, sometimes all at once.

British history aside — I’ve started reading A King’s Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor to boost my knowledge of the era — The King’s Speech has reenergized my passion for another pursuit: the English language. As the humble microphone transforms into an object of terror for Bertie, I couldn’t help but notice the accent then, a recognizable nonregional enunciation known as Received Pronunciation. Tight-lipped and sharp-voweled, it evokes, at least to me, a kinder, gentler, purer linguistic world — no Cockney glottal stop, no Welsh lilt, an absence of Geordie.

The real deal: A formal portrait of H.M. King George VI of the United Kingdom, circa 1940-1946. MATSON PHOTO SERVICE

As The King’s Speech continues to be lavished with awards and nominations — and a healthy run at the box office — it makes me glad to see other people appreciating a feel-good movie that’s not about things that smash and crash and blow up. “I think it can be mistaken in some ways for having something to do with the establishment simply because it’s about kings, queens and prime ministers as much as it’s about a struggling, obscure speech therapist,” Colin Firth told the BBC in January. “If you made a film for a very small amount of money and it doesn’t have a massive financial promotional machine behind it, then awards and festival buzz and critical love is the fuel on which it goes forward.”

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