I decided to ferret them out, because I just saw The King’s Speech with Colin Firth playing George VI. It’s a smart, adult movie, so I wonder how well it will do at the box office. The movie doesn’t have nearly as much vomiting, well, none, as Get Him to the Greek, a movie my husband and I watched last week and didn’t hate, actually. Didn’t Love, Actually, either, a Christmas movie which I also saw this week, again, because my brother-in-law insisted on it. I still like the Emma Thompson and Colin Firth sequences the best. The porno one makes me embarrassed, but just a bit.
But unlike St. Trinian’s, The King’s Speech doesn’t have Russell Brand or a Russell Brand style star. Maybe he should have played Edward VIII, since they appear to be kindred spirits. Well, no. Guy Pearce plays Edward in The King’s Speech -and very well, indeed- and the scene where he teases/abuses his brother, Bertie, is one of my favourites. It’s heart-rending.
Guy Pearce was in Memento, a movie I never learned to understand, and I just watched another movie, Inception, with my husband (or half of it, ’cause I gave up and went to bed) which is penned by the same screenwriter.
Inception got great reviews from the critics and public alike, (and did boffo box office) but, frankly, I can’t deconstruct video game style movies. (I always wonder, Is it me? Or is it holes in the plot? ) And as I have written before, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is my favourite movie, so I like the dream thing. I had to watch that movie but twice to get it and I’ve been enjoying it regularly ever since and it only gets better with each viewing.
All, to say, in as circuitous a way as possible, that I prefer stagey movies (and The King’s Speech is a bit stagey) to Video Game Inspired Movies. Because I am older, I guess. And I like good dialogue delivered by good actors (or in this case, great dialogue and great actors) and not a string of expletives, and sexist semen jokes, although this movie features strings of expletives as well as sly reference to certain (sexual?) skills acquired by Mrs. Wallace Simpson in Shanghai. (The King’s Speech almost got a nasty rating for these swearwords uttered by Colin Firth, who often swears in his movies, most effectively at the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary, which happens to have a ‘come-in-your-face’ joke, although it is not sexist and has an 8 and over rating in Canada. Serial vomiting and such is OK for the censors, I guess as is ‘aural sex’ ; a few swear words, in context, is not.)
If there has been any criticism of The King’s Speech, it seems, it is over the fact that the movie is a bit, (how do I put it?) Un-Stylized. It has a very accessible cinematic vocabulary. And it pulls all the right strings, emotionally and somewhat predictably, too. What’s wrong with that, though? The movie is perfectly paced and very cleanly-edited. It also has some lovely lovely photography.
But, wait, this blog is about clippings from 1936, 7 from the Nicholson stash.
I have a inside page of an article “Edward leaves shores of his native country…..Royal tears shed at farewell dinner…. Regal bearing of Queen Mother gone..(The Queen Mother who came with the Princess Royal, Mary, Countess of Harewood and the Countess of Athelone, walked slowly, holding the arm of her daughter. Her regal poise was gone.) Edward’s exile is self-imposed.”
Another article adjacent: Farewell Speech Evokes Praise. “Edward went out like a man.” Another article “Cabinet meets to pass on accession.” …Modern and ancient agencies of communicating official information played a part in the part in the proclamation of George VI as King throughout Canada today. Over the snowclad slopes of Parliament Hill, 21 guns barked out (sic) a royal salute, notifying all within hearing distance of the accession of a new monarch.
And then there’s this article, December 10: Princess Elizabeth now Heir as father ascends the throne. The article clearly explains the succession to the throne, saying “Well-defined hereditary principles have governed the succession since 1701, when the Act of Settlement received the Royal assent after being passed by a majority of one in the House of Commons.”
Hmm, that bit about the princess Royal makes me think that there are no non-archetypal female characters in the King’s Speech: Mother, Good Wife, Whore (Wallace Simpson) and two pretty girls. Wells, Princess Margaret would have fit the bill as a true to life woman. I saw that other movie the Bank Job that had, you know, the woman with the weird name, Saffron Burrows, who I first saw in the movie with Minnie Driver, Circle of Friends, which was the first time I saw Colin Firth and I hated him, because his character was a real-jerk.
