The King's Speech - review

I saw The King’s Speech a day after I saw Black Swan. The contrast between the two was stark. While Black Swan was a twisted tale of paranoia, The King’s Speech was much more mainstream in championing the cause of the underdog. The underdog in this case was, of course, King George VI of the United Kingdom.

Essentially a ‘poor little rich boy’ kind of a story, here we have a king struggling to overcome his speech defect. His predicament is accentuated because he has to give an oration that will motivate his subjects at the beginning of World War II. Albert (Colin Firth) is a second son and thus not in direct line to the throne. He is also somewhat shy and afflicted with a stammer that frustrates and infuriates him. After his hectoring father George V dies, his elder brother Edward becomes king. Edward is in love with American socialite Wallis Simpson and wants to marry her. However she is a two time divorcee and the King being Head of the Church cannot marry her. As a consequence, Edward takes the momentous decision of abdicating the throne in order to marry her. And his younger brother Albert finds himself a reluctant monarch.

Albert has tried many treatments to get rid of his stammer – including the humiliating experience of trying to speak with marbles in his mouth – but they don’t seem to work. Eventually, with his supportive wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) by his side he reaches the doorstep of an Australian speech defect therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Logue’s somewhat unconventional and progressive methods (no smoking, getting to the root cause of the stammer) first annoy ‘Bertie’ (as Logue insists on calling Albert) and then convince him. With the title of King George VI burdening him, Albert relies even more heavily on Logue to help him address his nation convincingly upon the September 1939 declaration of war with Germany. After his radio speech, as Logue watches, the King steps onto the balcony of the palace with his family, where thousands of people assembled for the speech applaud him.

Colin Firth gives a sterling performance as the beleaguered king who struggles to articulate his thoughts. His painful struggles to pronounce even simple words manage to strike a chord and elevate what could have been a trivial issue. An Oscar well deserved. Geoffrey Rush is assured as always in his portrayal of the unorthodox Logue. Helena Bonham Carter is also good and the relation between the King and his wife is tender and touching. In contrast to this, Edward the elder brother and Wallis Simpson are quite clearly painted as villains of the piece.

An inspirational movie that shows that nobody is too big to suffer and no problem too small to be of consequence. An easy watch though maybe a little too prolonged in places because one already knows how its going to end. On a happy note of course. The struggle is always more meaningful when one emerges victorious.

8/10

Black Swan - the review

Black Swan is a mesmerizing and disturbing insight into the life and mind of an obsessive ballerina. An unlikely juxtaposition of the bright with the dark, beautiful art with a bloody underbelly.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is the ballerina working for a ballet company that plans to stage a “visceral and real” production of ‘Swan Lake’. She eventually gets the coveted role of the Swan Queen beating off fierce competition. While the ballet director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) is confident she can portray the fragile White Swan, her performance as the seductive Black Swan is not impressive enough.

Nina is a frigid, fragile perfectionist who cannot lose control enough to be truly superb. Her manic obsession with her craft and her paranoia about losing the part lead to a gradual erosion of her ability to distinguish reality from delusion. Add to this a psychopathic mother (Barbara Hershey) who partly pushes her daughter to fulfill her unrealized ambitions and at the same time deeply resents her budding success. She treats Nina as a small child and it is scary to see Nina in her room surrounded by soft toys as her mother puts her to bed. At work she stays aloof from the other performers and is at a loss how to tackle the demanding director. She feels that she is not good enough and she cannot please him with her ballet even when he manipulates her sexually. For a while it appears she can be friends with the feisty and free-spirited new ballerina Lily (Mila Kunis) who takes her one night on a trippy nightclub ride. However soon she is seeing Lily as a competitor out to grab her prized role.

Nina’s struggle to break free of her unnatural lifestyle and her mother’s control , to perform the perfect White and Black Swan creates a dichotomy that splits her. She sees mirror images, doppelgangers everywhere. It culminates in a tumultuous and phantasmagoric opening night performance where she ‘becomes’ the Black Swan in her own mind. While her performance is a roaring success, her mind disintegrates almost completely. She feels feathers sprout out of her shoulders and sees enemies out to steal her part. In fighting her inner demons, Nina stabs herself in the process. We leave Nina as she lies in a pool of blood with the appreciation of the audience ringing in her ears.

Director Darren Aronofsky has created a movie that takes one right into the mind of the tortured protagonist, a movie that preys on you long after you have seen it. Here beauty is brittle and pain and paranoia a reality. There are gruesome scenes aplenty and ballet is a hard taskmaster that makes one bleed. Literally. There are also a few somewhat unnecessary sexcapades –perhaps to reinforce Nina’s stunted development there also. The director confines us in the same schizophrenic hell as his ballerina.

Natalie Portman, who won the Oscar for this role, throws herself into the role of the obsessed ballerina. She's fragile and harsh, strong yet weak, unsure yet confident, light and dark. Her performance is convincing and captivating.

For a movie that draws you into its dark spaces and takes you on a mind-bending ride, 7/10.