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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

The King’s Speech

In the age of mass communication, it’s no longer enough for a leader to be good at leading — he or she also has to be a good actor, capable of convincingly delivering inspiring speeches that will move millions. So what do you do when the only leader qualified for the job has an incapacitating stammer?

That’s the premise behind one of the year’s strongest Oscar contenders, the King’s Speech, based on the remarkable true story of the man who would become England’s King George the 6th, also known as Prince Albert, the Duke of York, and to family, as well as his unconventional speech therapist, as something a bit cuter.

Set in the mid 1930s, this is no stuffy British costume piece. Colin Firth plays Albert, second in line to the throne, who had been kept from the spotlight due to his stammering. But with the miracle of radio sweeping the globe, this is no longer an option. So Albert’s wife, Elizabeth, played by Helena Bonham-Carter, reaches out to Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist and failed actor played by Geoffrey Rush who holds the then-controversial belief that stammering is not caused by a physical ailment, but is rooted in past experience.

Albert’s predicament takes on added significance when King George the 5th, played by Michael Gambon, dies, and Albert’s reluctant older brother Edward, played by Guy Pearce, is forced to wear the crown, only to abdicate soon after to marry his American mistress. With Hitler’s war machine bearing down, Albert must take the throne and rally the nation, elevating his stammer to a matter of international importance.

The King’s Speech captures a fascinating moment in history as world leaders made the transition to being largely, sometimes primarily, actors, conveying empathy, strength and wisdom, whether they possessed them or not. Who knows how many potentially great leaders never got a chance in the modern age because their voice, looks or demeanor didn’t cut it for mass media? On the flip side, look at George W. Bush, a man educated in New England’s elite schools with a father who was the ultimate DC insider, who became leader of the world’s most powerful nation by pretending to be a cowboy outsider and occasionally seeming like he cared, incapable of talking off script, but able to convincingly read off a teleprompter.

In most ways, the King’s Speech is a perfectly executed movie. Firth, Rush, and Bonham-Carter put on an acting clinic, and the supporting cast is also excellent. The way the story expands and contracts, from a man trying to overcome his stammer to the future of the monarchy, to a portrait of a lonely man in a gilded cage to the future of the world, is masterfully done with a surprising and welcome amount of humor. And at its heart is the difficult but rewarding birth of an unlikely friendship between a commoner and a king who never had a friend.

The King’s Speech is rated R and is in theaters now.