King Firth

My last post didn’t take long to write at all, after all it’s much easier to write about something you feel disdain for than something you genuinely like. This blog is redolent with negativity, it thrives on it like a pig in shit. So it’s somewhat difficult and perhaps uninteresting to say that The King’s Speech is actually very good.
Of course you probably already know that, there’s a horde of positive reviews and it’s expected that Colin Firth will take home just about every award there is this year, even Slovenian footballer of the year. Despite knowing all this prior to seeing the film I predicted I wouldn’t enjoy it a great deal, I tend to resent these kind of films, how can they possibly live up to their pretentious reviews? They can’t be that good I think to myself and usually they’re not, but The King’s Speech somehow lived up to its grandiose reviews.
I often find critics get carried away with hyperbole when describing a performance as “powerful” or “mesmerising” or “like finding a pound - will make your day”. Much to the dismay of my cynicism Colin Firth’s performance in The King’s Speech is powerful, and it is mesmerising, it’s full of heart and soul, of fear and bravery, it’s like finding a five pound note. Yet Firth isn’t the only one to stand out, Geoffrey Rush is as equally impressive and in his short screen time Michael Gambon nearly manages to steal the whole darn show. Never have I ever sat at the cinema and thought to myself “wow this is good acting”, I’m not the sort of wanker who does that I ended up saying to myself (in my head - I‘m not mental) “gee whiz this is great acting”. What have I become?
It’s been embarrassing watching the English portrayed in film and television recently. Anyone who has seen The Tudors will understand what I mean, not only was it not interesting it was historically inaccurate as well. I understand that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character but he is such a quintessential staple of our culture that it’s offensive if you besmirch us with something like Guy Richie’s adaptation. The King’s Speech is unequivocally English however and it makes up for these embarrassments by being a true depiction of our nation and our culture and it’s somewhat bewildering that it was written by an American.
To call it a historical drama doesn’t do it justice, foreign audiences (and even English) may feel alienated from the subject matter but they will relate its deeply personal content and this is what makes it special. Most historical films are very rigid and offer little in terms of true emotion and sentiment but you can relate to The King’s Speech, it is about overcoming fear above anything else and this is what sets it apart from the rest of the crowd. Of course nothing says overcoming fear like facing giant robots, so I will wait for Transformers 3 before I declare this the film of the year.