The handwritten note on the door of our local cinema says it all about the enormous popularity of this film: "All of today's showings of The Kings Speech are sold out".
It's been a couple of weeks since the UK release and it's still difficult to see the story about King George VIth and Lionel Logue, the speech therapist that helped him get over his stammer. I had to call around to several cinemas; most preempted recordings with a message about limited or non-availability of tickets to see the film. After Googling the film, I finally got tickets at larger cinema about 30 miles away.
The first thing that struck me was the age of the audience. I had to get up several times to let ladies with beige jackets and pleated skirts get to their seats. I wondered when the last time most of them had been inside a cinema and was intrigued as to what brought them out on a rainy evening.
I grew up in the US, where the war didn't have the same effect and influence over an entire generation. While life was harder for my parents, it went on. Children weren't sent away from their families to be safe, and people didn't spend entire evenings in crowded, smelly bomb shelters. The stories passed on to me were more about food shortages and the worry that the Japanese submarines may make it over to the West Coast. My MIL's stories are much different; carrying gas masks to school everyday and living with a shell-shocked father. Of course she remembers gathering around the wireless to hear the King's speech when war was declared, and how the country endeared themselves to the King with the speech impediment. That is what brought these seniors out in droves. The film carries a direct link to the British psyche.
The film lets no one down. Colin Firth *sigh* is absolutely wonderful as "Bertie". Helena Bonham Carter plays his wife Elizabeth (Queen Mum). Geoffrey Rush is the sassy Aussie speech therapist Lionel. Other notables are Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury and Guy Pearce as King Edward VIII.
Getting out of the cinema took longer than usual, and there was a bit of a traffic jam *ahem* getting out of the car park, but this was one film I was glad to experience in the UK. You could just hear "Rule Britannia" being hummed as we got onto the M4.
