Movie: The King's Speech

My grandmother never wants to go to movies. Seriously, the last movie she saw was Windtalkers, which came out in 2002. And she hated it because it was, 'too violent' and had 'too much cussing'. Given that it was a movie about WWII...I don't know why any of that was a shock. But it apparently was.

But Tuesday last week, my Mom lets me know that my grandmother wants to go see The King's Speech and wanted to know if I'd take her. Well, I really wanted to see The King's Speech because, um, Colin Firth! but none of my regular movie buddies wanted to see it. Not really their 'thing'. And the one woman who would ordinarily enjoy a based on true events historical movie had a terrible stutter as a child and didn't want to see a movie about it. She said it was too close, which I could understand. So I had resigned myself to waiting and seeing it when it came out on dvd. But since my grandmother wanted to see it, well, problem solved!

I don't think there's any big secret on the 'plot' of the movie: it's about King George VI of England, who wasn't supposed to be king. But his older brother was a complete and utter idiot and wound up abdicating the throne so he could marry the American divorcee he was in love with. So the second son, who had a really, really terrible stutter wound up being king of England just as WWII starts. And the movie is all about his personal struggle to be the king his country needs, a public figure that is bold and someone the people can look to and rally around. Which, necessarily involves him being able to speak in public without the stutter.

This was a fabulous and painful movie.

It was just amazingly well done. It was actually painful to watch him stutter and try to choke the words out. There were a couple of scenes where I had to look away from the screen. Knowing that it was a movie, knowing that looking away wouldn't make it stop, or keep me from hearing the stutter, I still had to do it because I was so embarrassed for him. As if looking away from his 'shame' could make it better somehow. And there were parts where he was stuttering and I had the very real urge to reach out and just *shake* him until the words came out. It was awful and perfect. And then, in the final scenes, where he had to give his radio address, announcing that they'd just declared war on Germany....I was tearing up.

So very, very good. Painful, but in the best way.

ps: I also saw Unknown this weekend. Liam. Neeson. That is all.