Sunday, December 12, 2010

THE KING’S SPEECH




Historical drama
Based on true facts

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Michael Gambon: King George V of England
Claire Bloom: the queen consort Queen Mary
Colin Firth: their second son Prince Albert the Duke of York
Helena Bonham Carter: Albert’s wife Elizabeth
Geoffrey Rush: speech thearpist Lionel Logue
Guy Pearce: Albert’s older brother Prince David the heir apparent Duke of Windsor
Timothy Spall: First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill
Derek Jacobi: the Archbishop of Canterbury
Eve Best: Mrs. Wallis Simpson

REVIEW
I sat mesmerized by two fascinating performances, that of Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. Each in their own way had a difficult role to play and they both nailed it. The rest of the cast are no slouch but these two are the best of the bunch.

An extremely enjoyable film the well-written script has quite a few humorous quips to keep the proceedings from getting too serious. The director has wisely chosen to allow adequate screen time for some scenes albeit at the expense of adding to the running time of nearly two hours: like a good wine, some things cannot be hurried.

The British are the best at period pieces and this is no exception with beautiful cinemaphotography, elaborate sets and perfect costuming.

CLASSIFICATION
(in Canada) for some language.

Because there is one scene in which the future king is encouraged by his therapist to let loose with a string of obscenities as a form of liberating speech therapy the Motion Picture Association of America has slapped a R rating on the film. This puts it in the same category as scary horror movies and blood-soaked pornography-torture films like Saw 3D for example. How silly is that?

The British Board of Film Classification at first imposed a 15 certificate on the movie, thereby denying youngsters under that age the right to see it, but then relented by giving it a 12 A rating, which is the equivalent of a PG-13 in North America.

One thing to keep in mind: there is not one teenager out there who would be offended by this language and very few adults.

No comments: