The power of speech

I'm not going to jump on the already crowded bandwagon and tell you what a brilliant film "The King's Speech" is, but to tell you what you what I got out of it.

Putting aside the already applauded acting and superb casting, for me there were also some other hidden gems that really made the film even more compelling and interesting. The history that surrounded Edward VIII's abdication, his relationship and ridiculous infatuation with Wallace Simpson, the facts surrounding with George VI's stammer, the fact he was born left handed but was moulded into being right handed, the way his very dictatorial parents treated him so badly, the beautiful relationship he had with his two very different daughters and the fact he was so uncomfortable being a monarch.

But one part of film really caught my imagination and affected me strongly. It was when George VI was looking at footage of Hitler in full flow, a frenzied speech, laced with aggressive passion, with unbelievable frightening physical motion. You can see now how he changed a nation (for all the wrong reasons).

Yet against this we have George VI trying to deliberate on a speech to the nation less than 5 minutes long. So humble, so comforting, so re-assuring, so British. Yet just as powerful.