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Storyline
Tells the story of the man who became King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George ('Bertie') reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded stutter and considered unfit to be king, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue. Through a set of unexpected techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship, Bertie is able to find his voice and boldly lead the country into war. |
Backdrops
The Director
 Tom Hooper
Thomas George "Tom" Hooper (born 1972) is a British film and television director of English and Australian background. Hooper began making short films at the age of 13, and had his first professional short, Painted Faces, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University Hooper directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes of Quayside, Byker Grove, EastEnders and Cold Feet.
Into the 2000s, Hooper directed the major BBC costume dramas Love in a Cold Climate (2001) and Daniel Deronda (2002), and was selected to helm the 2003 revival of ITV's Prime Suspect series, starring Helen Mirren. Hooper made his feature film debut with Red Dust (2004), a South African drama starring Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor, before directing Helen Mirren again in the Company Pictures/HBO Films historical drama Elizabeth I (2005). He continued working for HBO on the television film Longford (2006) and in John Adams (2007), a seven-part serial on the life of the American president. Hooper returned to features with The Damned United (2009), a fact-based film about the English football manager Brian Clough (played by Michael Sheen). The following year saw the release of the historical drama The King's Speech (2010), starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, which was met with critical acclaim.
Hooper's work was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for Prime Suspect and John Adams, won one for Elizabeth I, and was nominated for the British Academy (BAFTA) TV Craft Award for Best Director for Longford. The King's Speech won multiple awards, including Best Director wins for Hooper from the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a Best Director nomination from BAFTA.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Tom Hooper (director),licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Video Reviews
User Reviews
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The King's Speech
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Colin Firth plays Albert, Duke of York, who will become King George VI, but getting there apparently took a bit of doing. Geoffrey Rush plays Lionel Logue; Helena Bonham Carter plays Elizabeth, the woman I think of as the Queen Mum; Michael Gambon plays King George V; and Guy Pearce plays the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, later still the Duke of Windsor. Oh, and Robert Portal played Equerry, although I have no clue what or who that was.
It's my understanding that much of the movie is historically correct. I did not know that King George VI stammered. And that's the thrust of the movie. Played out against Hitler and the onset of World War II, the drama of his stammer is more important than one would have expected, and the climax of the movie is King George's first speech as king of the British Empire announcing the state of war between England and Germany. (I hope this is not a spoiler for you.)
The movie revolves around the relationship between Albert, Duke of York and Lionel Logue. There were no transcripts of their training sessions, of course, so what exactly happened seems to me to be based on creative license, although a member of the Logue family served as advisor to the filmmakers and Logue kept diaries and wrote letters. Not much is known of his techniques for working with stammerers, but the movie suggests that Logue worked with his clients as friend and confidante. As Logue works with the future king, we learn that his father (George V) pressured all his sons into becoming more like the father. This pressure and several other problems seem to have lead Albert to stammer.
The movie unfolds with considerable humor and much warmth. The two pro...
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reviewed by philip (Filmaster.com) on the 3rd of January 2011
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This is a personal story told against a grand backdrop, with excellent performances from Rush and, particularly, Firth. I was entranced by his combination of awkward hesitance and misdirected rage. The film is not without its problems, as Rush's exaggerated theatrics are sometimes incompatible with Firth's immersive performance, and the film has a poorly executed conflict in the third act, but the power of Firth's performance and the appealing nature of the story overcome these foibles.