The King's Speech

When at school I learnt the hard truth of monarchy, constitutional, in particular, I lost all the interest I used to have in it. It is really sad that all those people in beautiful old-fashioned dresses and living in amazing castles don't make any real decisions but still have to follow rules of etiquette and always think before doing. Not really fair, as I thought when I was so much younger.

They don't get to have real life, real feelings, real anything - and films or TV series that I saw at the time about monarchs and court's life fueled that stereotype. And now, I'm older and possibly a bit wiser and I am still reluctant to let go of that. Seeing Kate and William, and them being so cute and real, hearing about that Swedish princess that got married to her fitness instructor or something - it ought to destroy this conception of mine.

None of these royal couples has achieved it though, but this film, The King's Speech, did.

It is an impossibly good mix of grandeur and ordinariness: there is Colin Firth walking through Westminster Abbey, and there he is, hiding in Lionel's office from Mrs. Logue. Telling bedtime stories to his kids and talking with prime ministers.

We get to see the inside of the royals' life and it all seems so genuine.
We've seen plenty of prime ministers portrayed on screen - from Hugh Grant to Meryl Streep but personally I've never seen a life of a king or a queen (a prince or a princess) that I wanted to be a part of. I always looked at them from the bird's eye point of view and rarely felt anything but overwhelming sadness for their ruined unhappy lives.

I was as nervous as "Bertie", I was as anxious as Elizabeth, I even sympathized with Churchill.

Brilliant movie, and it deserved all the awards it got.