My Fair King

I have just watched the so famous Academy Award best picture winner: The King's Speech, and I was amazed by the astonishing work Tom Hooper directed as far as it made me remember My Fair Lady so much. As a matter of fact, it is as brilliant as this last one.

The movie is about King George VI (played by Colin Firth), who has to overcome his stammering in order to pronounce his speechs, specially by the time England gets involved in the Second World War.

The movie starts when King George VI, then Duke of York, has to read a message from his father, King George V, at the closing ceremony of the British Empire Exibition. In this occasion he does not succeed in his task and begin to stammer dreadfully. Because of such a problem he tried some doctors to help him overcome his problem (one of them even makes him put some marbles into his mouth and try to read a book passage – reminds you of anything?) but with no success at all. At least until his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonhan Carter), persuades him to see Lionel Logue (amazingly interpreted by Geoffrey Rush).

Lionel (Higgins?!) then starts to work on muscle relaxation and breath control, while simultaneously probing the psychological roots of his stammer (which had its roots on the treatment he had been trough when he was a kid).

But what I really liked in this movie, besides the funny (but effective) techniques used by Lionel, was the psichological matter about the King's problem. I mean, it was not just a matter of "mechanic problems", as he and his wife thought.

This can be quite a good reminder to us (teachers) that our students, when not getting to pronounce properly, may have anatomical or, even worse, psichological troubles relating to that. Therefore, we must be very cautious about the way we teach phonology to our students and about what we ask from them.

Finally (and beautifully), the movie is also about friendship. In addition to the extreme sensibility Lionel has as to the King, he is also a very good friend.