The King's Speech

“We’re not a family, we’re a firm,” says the Duke of York, fated to be a reluctant monarch and played by Colin Firth, in “The King’s Speech.” And his father, King George V, grumbles about how this newfangled thing, the radio, has reduced the royal family to performers “invading” the homes of their subjects. (Lucky for King George he hasn't been around to see the present day Windsors, with their tabloid marriages, divorces, assignations and embarrassing photographs). Later, when the Duke has ascended to the throne following the abdication of his brother Edward—a playboy and a closet Fascist played with a touch of malevolence by Guy Pearce—the new monarch wonders what kind of King he is: he can’t raise an army, declare a war, levy a tax.

It’s a beautiful film and a crowd pleaser—stirring and sad and funny. And Americans like movies about the Brits. This one is also, I think, subtly subversive of the idea of royalty . What you feel most poignantly in Firth’s portrayal is the cruelty of the pretense of monarchy---a pretense that depends on  a certain elevated distance to maintain the myth of divinity, and a population willling to believe the myth--in an age when the all-too human foibles of a monarch are on view, or audible, for all to see and hear. Brutalized as a child but cossetted in privilege and never knowing an hour of productive labor, the reluctant King knows what his family is, but must appear before his people as the heir to a divine line. That he shoulders the burden his vain but intellectually inferior brother shirks and goes on to inspire his people in wartime is his greatness. It’s a genuinely moving story, but this viewer could not also help feeling what a cruel and wasteful anachronism is the British royalty. The three principals—Firth; Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the King’s speech therapist; and Helena Bonham Carter as his wife, Queen Elizabeth—are all brilliant. My favorite is Helena Bonham Carter, tirelessly slumming it to find her husband the help he needs, but insisting everywhere on protocol.