The Bromance Between Bertie and Logue

This is a backfill of an old post, originally written 2011/06/24

Yesterday I was restless, bored, wanted to cuss someone out but couldn’t, wanted to write something but couldn’t, wanted to chat with someone but nobody was online. So I dug out that copy of The King’s Speech that had been sitting on my hard drive for nearly six months and started watching. Honestly, the only reason I downloaded it was because I heard Inception got completely crushed by it at the Oscars, so I grabbed it to pay my respects to a masterpiece. But life is unpredictable, and every time I wanted to watch it afterward, something or other got in the way. So yesterday, that lonely night, I finally finished the film with a lonely mindset, a lonely mood, and lonely eyes glued to a lonely monitor. Two hours later, my feelings were exactly the same as before I watched it — just as lonely, just as restless. Plus one more feeling: “That’s it?” Oh sorry, that was too polite. What I meant was: “This piece of shit wasted two hours of my life and then ended without explaining a goddamn thing?”

As a film, plot is the main thing. The King’s Speech’s plot is relatively simple: it’s about how a chuuni learns to give a speech into an extremely stupid microphone in a tiny room. After watching, I thought it was pretty average. Not much music, but passable. The whole film feels flat — no climax, no buildup. Basically you can see the ending from the opening scene. But what really got me worked up was searching for reviews online afterward, trying to understand how this thing won an Oscar. And then, yes, on Douban — Douban again — I saw a tidal wave of perfect scores. I can’t be bothered to go through the long ones; the gist is always “the plot is flat, the effects are flat, the cinematography is flat, the characters are flat, but it’s just amazing, 10/10 no explanation.” Fuck off. If everything’s flat, why don’t you give it a flat score too? In your world, 0+0=1, right?

First of all, the film is not inspirational in the slightest. From the start, Prince Bertie displays his dumbassery everywhere: unfriendly to a doctor he’s never met, inexplicably irritable, throwing childish tantrums. We basically see a naked little kid screaming “I don’t wanna see the doctor!” Second, the pretension. When Logue first meets him and tries to make conversation, what happens? This dumbass prince acts all high and mighty: “I’m royalty, you dare call me by my pet name Bertie, I’ll have you shot.” Then the plot unfolds exactly as we expect: when Bertie puts on the loud headphones, he finally reads the Shakespeare script fluently. Which means it’s just a lack of self-confidence. And then? And then? We’re all waiting for Prince Bertie to suddenly awaken later in the film, become an absolute great man, and show us a heroic image. Just like Logue told his wife earlier: “He will be a Great Man.” But then, but then, but then — Bertie’s old man, the previous king, on his deathbed, passes the throne to him, right? And he fucking refuses, right? He gives the throne to his brother, right? Fine, that’s to further highlight Bertie’s lack of confidence. I firmly believed he’d power up later in the film. But then, but then, but then — in the end it’s his brother who, for the sake of his lover, resolutely gives up the throne and tosses the king’s seat to Bertie with incredible coolness. Holy shit, you’ve got to be kidding me. We’re all waiting for Bertie to power up, and the one who powers up is Bertie’s brother — what the hell are you doing? David should’ve been the protagonist, damn it. That kind of treating power like shit, loving one woman for life, sweeping and moving — that’s true heroism.

Fine, our protagonist Bertie finally receives the throne passed down from his brother, so he inexplicably becomes king, and he still stutters. Which means he still lacks confidence. Then the world war breaks out, Britain needs to declare war, the king needs to give a speech, and Bertie is once again pushed to the forefront. At this point our amazing protagonist Bertie is helpless again — stuttering, nervous. Then his good bro Logue finally comes to him again, and in the end, in a ridiculously tiny room, Bertie stammers his way through the speech facing his good bro Logue’s body. And then? And then? A bunch of people get fired up, a bunch of people cheer, a bunch of people say “this speech really encouraged Britain’s fighting spirit.” Fuck that. I don’t know if the British soldiers on the front lines, being encouraged by this stammering speech, ever thought about how the guy reading it had no intention of encouraging them at all — instead he was thinking “ugh, hurry up and let me finish so I can go home and sleep.” And I don’t know if they’d still feel encouraged after learning that. At the end we see some text trying to vindicate Bertie, saying he gave many speeches afterward that greatly encouraged his soldiers. Speeches, my ass. That’s called someone else preparing a script and him reading it, and reading it in a room, and with a “hurry up and finish so I can leave” attitude, with zero emotion. That’s even more bullshit than Grandpa Wen! If the real George VI was like this, then I feel the British royal family might as well pack it in…

All in all, The King’s Speech is a very bland film, one that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and one that feels completely immersion-breaking. Given that I’ve been watching a lot of ACG lately, this film should really be called “The Bromance Between Bertie and Logue,” right? No matter how much you say Inception is a commercial film full of filthy money, it actually sucked me in and made me worry about how they’d pull off the backlash. Also, it proves that the bunch of spineless, opinion-less dumbasses on Douban who see others give high ratings and then pile on flowery praise — they should go learn how to flex properly in Douban’s flexing groups before coming out to mix with the rest of us.