The King's Speech Screening and Conversation with Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper

On Sunday - after our Saturday of holiday tidings - we attended another special event which was much more intimate, but equally as Australian.

Our favorite movie house in town is the arty Palace Cinema in Paddington. It's a gem of a theatre where we've seen all manner of arthouse and foreign films. When we got an email about a special event showing of The King's Speech, we jumped right on booking the tickets (good thing because it sold out fast). I had been so looking forward to this film since seeing a preview for it, and even more so after my grad school advisor, the wonderfully wise Charles McNulty wrote this stirring piece in the L.A. Times, in which he paralleled his own journey with stuttering with that of King George VI, as portrayed in the film.

This showing that we booked tickets for was truly a treat because it was introduce by the film's director, Tom Hooper, and following the screening, there was a Q&A session with Hooper an Geoffrey Rush.

Randomly enough, at the start of the film, Hooper was introduced by Baz Luhrmann, who has no connection to the movie, except, he said, as a fan and someone who wanted to promote what he sees as a quintessentially Australian film. His assertion was the the film is not Australian simply because it features an Australian leading character, played by an Australian (Guy Pierce, who plays Prince Albert, is also an Aussie), and directed by a "half-Australian." Instead, he argued that the movie is Australian because of the attitude of the main character, the speech therapist, who comes from the Australian culture, which is disinterested in hierarchical class distinction. As a result of his populist mindset, he treats the King like any other person, and it is this aspect of his treatment that garners the greatest results.

Hooper introduced the movie by telling a bit about its origin and his involvement, and joked that Geoffrey Rush liked to ask him which half of him was Australian - the top or bottom.

I loved the film, and was so taken by the storytelling, the nuanced performances of the whole cast, and the gorgeous scenery. I was most of all taken by the beauty of the story itself, with its themes of triumph over adversity, the power of genuine love and friendship, and the ability of one man to change history through his own determination and innate goodness. It is a masterful, deeply felt film that is easy to love.

After the film, as promised, we were re-introduced to Hooper and introduced to Geoffrey Rush for a Q&A session. I thought about pulling an eternally nerdy act and snapping a photo on my camera phone for the blog, but as we were 3rd row center, I thought I'd better contain myself.

Rush talked about his own  history with the film, a story which involved a play script being delivered to his front doorstep in Melbourne. He spoke about his friendship with Colin Firth, which began when they did publicity for Shakespeare in Love. Someone asked him a silly question about whether Colin Firth was playing the equivalent of his role in Shine, which he accepted gracefully and turned into an intelligent answer about theatrical archetypes - he gave a funny line about people saying that he plays a lot of "maddies," but that perhaps you could take his roles in Pirates of the Carribean and a film he did set in Queensland and call it his "tropical period." I so appreciate an actor who can speak intelligently about his own range, and where his work fits into the theatrical/cinematic landscape.

I even got up the nerve to ask a question.

Thinking of my advisor's article, I asked how Hooper and Colin Firth had tackled the portrayal of the stutter, with seriousness, and avoided completely the comic territory. Hooper said that it had been very helpful to have the screenwriter in the process because he was also a stutterer, so they could speak to him about his own journey. They worked hard to portray the mental anguish that a stutterer feels, rather than simply the vocal pattern. Rush mentioned that they had also looked at some of the more comic portrayals, like Porky Pig to understand the range of how stuttering had been seen in the media, and that Firth's sister is actually a speech therapist, and that she'd spoken to the cast, which had been very helpful. Hooper said that the most telling story was the Firth began to inhabit the stutter, so much so that during the filming period, he accepted an award for A Single Man, and came back to report that he'd actually stuttered at the event. "That's great news!," Hooper said that he told Firth.

What a unique joy it was to be able to share such a moving film with the creators, who are obviously so passionate about the whole project. Fascinating, also, to focus my viewer's lens on the Australianess of the movie, something which may have been lost on me if I'd not seen it in this context.

Between this event and Carols in the Domain, I do believe that I had a weekend crash course in Australian culture!