Over at Facebook, I was foolish enough to criticize the film The King’s Speech, in a post which has attracted 37 comments so far, some from people who take critiques of films they like very personally. So I figured I might as well spread the controversy to the blogosphere.
Here’s the deal: this is nothing more than a beautifully filmed and well-acted buddy movie, a kind of lame soap opera fit for PBS, and a movie that deftly affirms our post-modern existentialist sympathies while skirting the more serious issues it brings up. Why is it that Brits are so fond of things they don’t believe in anymore, like the monarchy or Christ? Why is this movie so much like the Anglican church itself, an aesthetic exercise in nostalgia?
First of all, I don’t deny that the heart of the story is redemptive friendship, and that it does a decent job telling that story. But so do lots of simpler films without the pretense.
Here we are given a story whose setting and plot present us with elements that are not resolved within the tale. Here we have a king who stutters and who needs to learn to speak so that he can lead properly. Why? Because leadership consists in public image, and we’ve got to assert a confident public image with Hitler lurking in the shadows. Is leadership anything more than good speechifying? Apparently not, for while we are given the foil character of the brother who abdicates, and who has no taste for the kingly burden, nothing is made of this in the film—and how can it be? The film presents us with a king who is politically castrated and who must follow the rules of the Anglican church, rules which prevent kings from marrying divorcees, rules which almost everyone in the West now thinks are ludicrous—and which are ironic given Henry VIII and all that.
The climax of the film is the successful radio speech. Further demands upon the king for leadership are glossed over. He has learned to present himself well, and so he has won. The unorthodox friendship has paid off. The sacrifices of the Britons and the allies who are the ones who will win the real victory are totally ignored. Sacrifice is not the issue; the resolution comes from Image, itself the result of Therapy.
And this is why I say this film fits right into our modern existentialist leanings. Movies have been telling us for decades that we can create our own meaning, and that faith in something is all we need, that confidence will get us through, and that (by extension) a confident bearing is the sum total of the demands of leadership.
Compare this with Shakespeare’s notions of royalty. The film alludes to Shakespeare a great deal, but again only for window dressing. Shakespeare’s tragedies deal with royal figures because each Christian has inherited the Kingly character of Christ, and must exercise this Kingly authority. What does that mean?
It means nobility. It means self-sacrifice. It means magnanimity. It does not mean self-indulgent hedonism (the movie presents that view of royalty in the character of the abdicating brother, but is afraid to stress the negative qualities of this hedonism, since the producers know the audience thinks the prohibition against divorce and remarriage is absurd). It does not mean learning to talk well.
A Facebook friend responded to this critique by calling me a bigot who has a strange antipathy toward the Anglican church. I assured her that as a former Anglican, I am not bigoted against the Anglican church. I am bigoted against Quakers. Then, on a more serious note, she suggested that public communication is central to leadership, which is why God agreed to let Aaron speak while Moses led.
This, of course, makes my point. Moses was the central leader of the Jewish people before David and before Christ. He led without a microphone, without a teleprompter, and without a PR firm. Aaron took the lesser chore, while Moses did the heavy lifting.
By contrast, The King’s Speech ignores completely the deeper implications of kingly leadership, focusing only on the king’s public image and his difficulty in maintaining it. The good speech is the climax of the movie and the resolution of the plot. I think that’s simplistic and borne of an age that is all about the teleprompter.
If I might offer a somewhat more restrained response, I think your critique of society is perfectly well taken and your critique of the movie perhaps somewhat exaggerated.
I say that because the film does touch upon the elements you mention. George VI keenly appreciates the duties, sacrifices, and responsibilities that the monarch faces. Indeed, the film focuses heavily on the personal sacrifice that he makes in attempting to lead effectively. He certainly does not want to be king: he wants to be quiet and retiring; he wants his brother to do what he was born to do.
The film was quite harsh in its portrayal of Edward VIII, showing him as weak-willed, flippant, iconoclastic, and hedonistically irresponsible. Granted, the movie didn’t hammer these points, but it wasn’t a film about Edward VIII’s foibles. It was a film about George VI’s stammer.
Did the producers think that the rules that led to Edward’s abdication, royal bearing, discipline and sacrifice, etc. are a bunch of rot? Likely so. Do most people who see the film think likewise? If they think about such things at all, probably. But the movie, while while certainly not being a didactic lesson on the virtues, is not, I think, quite the vacuous exercise you suggest: several observers have noted that the film was surprisingly accurate, and there is only so much violence one can do to the past when describing what actually happened.
I must admit that I was surprised the film was as willing as it was to address show the need for sacrifice, discipline, and tradition. Perhaps I simply have very low standards. And for what it’s worth, I will readily admit my antipathy towards the Anglican communion.
Hmm … I got a whole different message from the film … I got that George VI, altho not wanting to be in the spotlight, but understanding his role as a part of the Royal family had to get up and get the job done. When his brother, who is shown as a weak, self-centered, twit, abdicates, Bertie is thrust into the limelight and must learn to overcome his life-long disability.
To me, The King’s Speech is about family ties, doing the best, sacrifice and obedience. It’s about “get ‘er done” as we say in the South.
Well, the title of the movie is The King’s Speech. SHould you be expecting something more complex when the movie is about the genesis and successful production of a single speech? Given that as the subject, I would say it went fairly in depth, actually.
It seems film criticism is where it’s at! If I review more movies, I’ll get more comments on my posts!
Seriously, I admit that I’m over-reacting to the movie, trying to get a rise out of people. It was, in many ways, a good film. I will say, however, it was exactly as interesting as I thought it would be.
I liked the film as a story about a man overcoming a disability but I also see where you’re coming from on a lot of the other issues. I think we should all look more carefully at the movies we watch. I did really like your point about Aaron and Moses. A great speaker doesn’t necessarily make a great leader.
To Kevin O’Brien:
I know I am coming as one late-born to this post, but having been referred to it recently, I find that on further consideration I do have a couple of reservations.
Firstly, you say that “The King’s Speech” is a “buddy movie”–like that’s a bad thing. I could understand a secularist thinking that politics or money or sex must be a better subject for a film than friendship, but should a Christian go along with them? Friendship has often been seen by Christian thinkers as exemplifying self-less, specifically Christian, love– agape– as distinct from the sort of love which seeks its own benefit, which is inevitably present to some extent in romantic or sexual love. Isn’t the “Gospel according to St. John” a sort of a buddy story, “Greater love hath no man, than to lay down his life for his friends”, and so forth? Also, the film’s criticsm of David/Edward, who opts for selfish sexual love, seems to me refreshingly sharp. Maybe it didn’t appear that way from an American pespective, you guys tend to be more up open about these things, but from one closer to the English tradition of under-statement, I can assure you that it was, and was intended to be, quite brutal.
Then as to the question of leadership, and kingship. Once again, this is perhaps more difficult to understand from an American point of view. For although king, Bertie is not allowed to show real leadership; as he says at one point, he can’t form a government or declare war. Nevertheless, at that time and place, due to the role of the monarchy in English history, he did have a certain power as a symbol. So he could raise spirits, rally the troops, by his presence and words: by giving a speech. This position of royalty was certainly not rational, and it hasn’t lasted, but it was real. And it is perhaps no more irrational as a national sentiment than the exaggerated respect which even Catholic Americans have for their Constitution–that undistinguished bit of eighteenth century Deist philosophy.
However I think that the real strength of the movie comes not from the idea that George VI was a great leader, but from the notion that he made real sacrifices to do what he believed to be his duty. I was moved by his efforts, despite his personal problems and limitations, to do the right thing. He seemed to me like Frodo in “Lord of the Rings”: chosen to do a task he’s not really suited for, not sure he’s going to succeed, but giving it his all anyway. His struggles are all the more poignant if you know a bit of the historical context: Queen Elizabeth and Bertie’s wife always held a grudge against the abdicator Edward, because they held that the ultra-sensitive Bertie being thrust into the job of king, in war-time, greatly shortened his life. (He died very young.) So it is arguable that George VI was really like the millions of soldiers, in that he did sacrifice his life for his duty, his country, his friends. By presenting him as a hero and a role-model, “The King’s Speech” is giving us I believe, albeit unwittingly, Christian truth.