FILM

Colin Firth stars as the stammering Duke of York in acclaimed period drama ‘The King’s Speech’. Robin Askew choose his words carefully.

Right now – and bear in mind that thanks to Christmas deadlines this was written in mid-December – 'The King's Speech' is being positioned as the big winner in the upcoming awards season. But regardless of how many well-deserved gongs Tom Hooper's film walks away with, it has already notched up another rare achievement: a reversal on the part of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The film tells the true story of 'Bertie', the Duke of York (Colin Firth), and his struggle with a crippling stammer, which became all the more pressing upon his reluctant ascension as George VI following the abdication of his brother. One of its most memorable scenes shows antipodean speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) introducing the unorthodox if effective technique of sustained swearing. In its usual, rather literal fashion, the BBFC simply totted up the rude words without any regard for their context and pronounced that under its rules the film could not be passed for viewing by children under 15.

Speaking at last November's London Film Festival, Hooper was “bemused”. “My head is in my hands about it. I go to see ‘Salt’, where a tube is force fed down Angelina Jolie’s throat and water poured down her throat to simulate drowning. That’s not a problem. The Daniel Craig scene in the last Bond film, where his bollocks are smashed in through a chair that has no bottom – that doesn’t get a 15 certificate. This extraordinary division we make between language and violence and sex I find hugely disturbing… The context of the swearwords is (a) it was done in the 1940s and we are now in 2010, (b) it’s therapeutic, and (c) it’s not being used to describe anyone. It is not being used in its sexual meaning and it’s funny!”

Following a formal appeal, the BBFC recanted and reduced its rating to 12A, appending a unique line of 'consumer advice': "Contains strong language in a speech therapy context". But was the Queen's dad really helped to overcome his stammer by bellowing 'bugger', 'shit' and, er, 'poo-bum'? This is where artistic licence comes in, along with the direct experiences of screenwriter David Seidler. "I am sure that everyone knows the royal family's ability to control the flow of information from the Palace is pretty formidable," observes Hooper. "So I think that reflects our ability to tell their stories even when it’s a few decades later. The most valuable source for us was these diaries [written by Lionel Logue]. He is still incredibly careful not to talk too much about the detail of what is happening in the therapy. For me, the things that I got out of it were dialogues. For example, at the end of the speech when Lionel says to the king, 'You still stammered on the W', and the King says, 'Well, I had to throw in a few to show them it was me', that is a direct quote from the diary. In terms of where the therapy comes from, that comes out of David Seidler’s imagination. But if he has a strong claim on understanding of therapy in that period, it’s because he was born in 1937. He had a terrible stammer as a child and he went through therapy, initially in England and then also in America in the 40s and early 50s – 10, 15 years after the period Lionel Logue was practising. So things like the swearing technique, we don’t know whether that would have happened, but the interesting thing is that was a technique that was used with David in the 1940s."

We're not alone in wondering what Her Maj is likely to make of these scenes when she eventually sneaks out to rent the DVD. "It’s crossed my mind," confesses Firth, who's being lined up as a shoo-in for Best Actor at the Oscars. "I don’t know. I think it really works in our story. I would possibly doubt that it happened, but I think it is very unlikely that we will get anybody to verify it as being inaccurate and I just like it too much in terms of a breakthrough. It is quite a significant moment. Actually, if I had my script version of it, it would have been worse. There was a moment when the producers came running in to the room saying, 'Erm, no! You can say that and that, but not that! You cannot finish with that word if you want a release in certain countries.' It wasn’t frivolous; we weren’t cocking a snook at anybody. We actually felt it had a genuine place as part of our story and as part of our therapy."

As for his mastery of the stammer, Firth credits Seidler's eloquence on the subject. "What you are really playing is not stammering," he observes. "That is what you have got to arrive at because that is what the person is going through… What interested me the most, rather than what’s going on in a man’s muscles, was talking to David about what the fears are. David would say, for instance, when it was bad, it was all you think about. When you go to a restaurant, you don’t order the fish if you can’t say 'F'. You order the beef, even if you want the fish. And your life can be like that, it can be dictated by that fear. It doesn’t matter what else is at stake that day, it’s 'Can I say it?' Those things were very helpful to me for the insight into the fear that that this man felt when he couldn’t climb out of these silences."

As Mrs Bertie, aka Queen Elizabeth, aka the Queen Mum, Helena Bonham Carter is in a unique position among the cast in that she once actually met the person she's playing. "I met her because she came to the premiere of 'A Room with a View' when I was very young, all those centuries ago," she laughs. "She was great at being gracious and had that cloud of charming vagueness. I think underneath it, having read about it, she had a huge amount of inner strength. Cecil Beaton said that she was a marshmallow but made by a welding machine. I thought that I could try and get that duality."

She has, of course, played her fair share of queens lately, including the stroppy Red Queen in hubby Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland'. But while filming as the future Queen Mum she was simultaneously playing the witch Bellatrix Lestrange in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. That must have been confusing. "Actually, my son, who was six at the time, said, 'Mummy, do you have to play the witch or the Queen tomorrow?' I said, ‘That's a good question, as long as I don’t get them mixed up.' Having said that, the witch, Bellatrix, is quite exhausting because she is all screamy and a bit of a hooligan, so it was quite nice to have the weekends off as the Queen, just being a bit more restrained."

'THE KING'S SPEECH' OPENED ON FRI 7 JAN. FOR FULL FILM LISTINGS AND REVIEWS SEE THIS WEEK'S VENUE MAGAZINE.
 

Copyright Robin Askew 2011

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