(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Finished watching The King's Speech - yes, I know, I'm most likely the last person on the planet to have seen it. Or close to it. Rather enjoyed it. Not your typical historical period piece. Or bio-pic. Instead it was a story about resolving a specific problem - a speech defect. Which like my mother, I know something about, so identified. The historical bits - I know rather little about, so the inaccuracies did not bother me. My knowledge of British History is not "detailed". For example? I really don't know if Winston Churchill favored King George or Prince David of Wales. Nor do I particularly care. What fascinated me was how they handled the speech impediment, and how people reacted to the King before and after he dealt with it. I had a lisp as a child, and my mother was a speech pathologist. So, in some respects, the film had an emotional and personal resonance for me that I'm not so sure it did for others that saw it.

As mother states - they actually do a good job with the stutter. Most people do it wrong in films.
Same with speech pathologists. Here - it works. The whole speech pathology bit was right on target.
And how you get over it? Even more so. But if you know nothing about speech pathology or care about it, and have never struggled with a speech deficit - this probably didn't mean all that much to you?

Famous stutters who got over it with acting classes or the method that Lionel shows King George?

*Nicholas Brendon - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
*James Earl Jones - the voice of Darth Vadar

Did it deserve to win an Oscar? Well more so than about half the films nominated. The Social Network, I'm sorry, didn't. I've seen them all now, and have to say outside of The Black Swan, The Fighter, and Winter's Bone - can't really remember any of them all that well. I just saw the King's Speech and yes, I think it fits in that company. The other films? Forgettable. Which is often the case with the Oscars, actually. But mileage varies obviously.

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

"But if you know nothing about speech pathology or care about it, and have never struggled with a speech deficit - this probably didn't mean all that much to you?"

well I think the fact that the movie won the Oscar for Best Picture showed that the movie managed to make a lot of people care about this....
Of course for me there was also the very well done metaphor of England stuttering on the world stage, appeasing the Nazis and hesitating to take action, so I think the whole film came together on a lot of levels. As you say, they took liberties with the history, but they managed to tell a good/tight story in an interesting way.

I've known a number severe stutterers who have managed to improve with meditation, and with singing.... But Lionel's methods were very interesting (and I do believe that a lot of that was based on reports by other patients who had had also worked with Lionel).