"The King's Speech" is a very good historical drama. If you use food as an analogy, it is like a well-cooked red wine stew: a little elegant but full, the ingredients are exquisite but not artificial, the taste is bland but not limited, the nutrition is balanced, and the appearance is exquisite. Family friendly and memorable - if you've seen the movie, you'll know what I mean.
However, if you also know a little about the history of the British royal family, you will find that in fact, the court story has some violent material and blood, some usurped throne and adultery, some war of resistance and belief, and fell into the "visionary" Chinese screenwriter. In my hand, I can shoot ten and eight "Gong Xin Ji", plus seven or eight red theme films. However, this "The King's Speech" made by the British gave up the delicious and juicy "play meat" and took the humble "how the stuttering king overcomes his flaws with the help of his teacher to give a wartime speech". The "fruit core" of the tree has carved flowers on it, and even raised flesh and blood. This alternative trend can not but be said to be a display of the creator's aesthetic taste.
Most Chinese audiences in the British version of "Gong scheming"
know the British King Edward VIII who "loved beauty but not the country". In order to marry an American woman who had been divorced twice, he was strongly questioned by the church. In the end, he would rather give up the throne than hold the beauty back. He abdicated in 1936 and passed on to his younger brother George VI, who is now Queen Elizabeth. Father. The King's Speech tells the story of George VI.
George VI lived in the shadow of his father and brother since childhood, suffered from severe oral problems, was introverted, resisted public speaking, and was unprepared to become the king of England. However, history is destined to put the "unexpected prince" to a severe test. In 1939, three years after George VI's accession to the throne, Britain and Germany went to war, and the rampant attack of German fascists brought Britain into an unprecedented predicament. The people urgently needed a spiritual leader who could lead them through the difficulties, as a national symbol. The king of the country must stand up at this time. So, with the help of speech trainers who were also teachers and friends, George VI overcame the obstacle of stuttering and delivered a wartime speech to the country through the radio, which moved and inspired all British people. He became a symbol of British nobility and unyielding, even in the most dangerous period of the war, when Buckingham Palace was bombed by the Germans, he stayed in London with the Queen and the young princesses. His wife (now Queen Elizabeth's mother) famously said: "The little princesses will always stay with me, and I will always be with the king, who will never leave the country!" "The king is still in London" has become a stabilizing needle for stabilizing the hearts of the British people during the war.
In contrast, George VI's abdicated brother and his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, had a close relationship with the German fascists. Even in the British "Guardian" published a few years ago, a secret was published, pointing out that the Duchess of Windsor was a German spy, and the British government had long suspected that she used her divorce as an excuse to force Edward VIII. Shi abdicated, and has been strictly monitoring and guarding against the couple. There are also declassified files saying that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor conspired to usurp the throne when George VI was seriously ill. Fortunately, it failed, and the current Queen Elizabeth was successfully enthroned.
Although the history of Jun and Teacher
is so splendid and colorful, "The King's Speech" is only a scoop of drink, and the whole chapter is about the relationship between the king (Bertie) and his lecturer (Lionel). The rest of the character relationships all relegated to the background.
In fact, the relationship between the emperor and the national teacher is also expressed in many traditional Chinese stories. Because this relationship is really interesting: the teacher of the monarch is also the minister of the monarch. There are dislocations and conflicts between these two groups of "ruler-subject" and "teacher-student", which are very delicate and full of crises. You need to know humility, and teachers need to know how to advance and retreat, but neither is easy. If it is handled improperly, the master will lose sight of the teacher, the teacher will lose his life, and both will suffer.
The British version of "Emperor and Taishi" is also making a fuss about this delicate relationship. One is a king, and the other is a despondent speech trainer who loves Shakespeare but is unhappy. The two are almost at the two poles of the social class, but because of the king's mouth disease, they have the opportunity to meet and collide. When Lionel taught Bertie, who was a prince at the time, for the first time, he insisted on calling him by his first name instead of calling him "His Royal Highness", which made the prince very unhappy. And the next steps are basically the process of pulling the prince (and later kings after the perilous accession to the throne) from the unattainable altar step by step and letting their feet sink into the dust. Lionel Teach him to swear, sing, shout, free his limbs by jumping around, let him learn to chat easily, and give him a model of an airplane that he has no chance to touch in the palace, and these methods all point to the same purpose, that It is to let Bertie get rid of the cross, let go of the self as a "king", and regain the lively and healthy mind of an ordinary person. Lionel knew in his heart that a large part of the king's stuttering was due to the court restraints he had been subjected to as a child. Coupled with his father's strictness and his brother's ridicule, he was stuck in the gap between self-confidence and inferiority. He could not let go of his noble figure and was ashamed of his own shortcomings. The psychological burden suppressed his freedom of expression, and he fell into inner distress but failed to express his intentions. 's predicament. Therefore, Lionel's strategy is to "do not break, do not stand", only by breaking the king's idol can he speak like a normal person. To this end, Lionel did not hesitate to challenge the authority of the king, forcing him to speak up in defense of his dignity. And when the king was about to give his first wartime speech in the radio room, Lionel stood in front of the nervous king and said to him, look at me as if he were talking to me, like he was talking to a friend to speak. The king finally did it. His speed of speech was slow and his tone was heavy, but this fit the context of the pressure of the enemy at that time and the fear in the hearts of the people. His voice fell on the same frequency as the heartbeat of all the listeners. And what helped him to do this was "letting go"—letting go of his fears, his cover-ups, his past, his inferiority complex, and his pride. And when he finally completes this speech, it also means that he has built a new "king's self" on the ruins of the past. Lionel, the king's teacher, realizes that his mission has been completed. Instead of calling him by name, he called him "Your Majesty" respectfully, and silently retreated to a corner while he was cheered by the crowd. The king who was pulled down from the altar has completed his transformation and stepped on the ladder to climb the ivory spire again, and the "master of the king" has also returned to the duty of "the minister of the king". This process of "from breaking to standing" is not only the training that a young king must go through, but also the baptism and education that all those in power need to undergo, symbolizing the source and ownership of power, past and present lives.
Light and Heavy
Milan-Kundera said: "The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth, the more real it is. On the contrary, when the burden is completely absent, a person becomes lighter than air and floats. It will be far away from the earth and the life on the earth, and man will be only a half-real existence, and his movement will become free and meaningless."
- This is the title of "The Unbearable Lightness of Life". Light and heavy, sometimes it is fate, sometimes it is a choice. It may be too simple and rude to interpret choosing the lightness and weight of life as escaping or facing responsibility, but it is also an entrance. In "The King's Speech", George VI and his elder brother, the Duke of Windsor, abandoned and guarded the throne, reflecting the choice between "the lightness of life" and the "heavyness of life".
In fact, neither of the brothers are the best candidates for the king, and each has a fatal wound. The younger brother's fatal wound was a stutter, which made it difficult to fulfill the traditional ceremonial responsibilities of being king as a symbolic ruler. And his brother's fatal wound was that he fell in love with a woman he shouldn't have loved. Not to mention whether the rumor that the Duchess of Windsor was a German spy was true, the monarch of a country fell in love with a married woman who had been divorced once, known as Mrs. Simpson, and was an American who was naturalized in the United Kingdom. In the UK in the 1930s, it was really inconsistent with etiquette, and the social perception was extremely poor. Moreover, at that time, Britain was on the brink of war, where the "mountains and rains were about to come and the wind filled the building", the ghostly shadow of Fascist Germany was pressing step by step, and the king was indulged in the private affairs of his children and had no intention of performing his duties. In the end, the king decided to marry a beautiful woman and abandon the country. Although some people refer to it as a romantic story, from the point of view of a king of a country, there is a suspicion of avoiding the important, because his decision actually chose a light attitude for himself. It is also a way to avoid liability. In contrast, George VI, the younger brother who was in danger and who inherited his father's name, overcame his inner fears, tried to correct his stutter, and used his worst skills when the war came. The speech to encourage and comfort the people in fear; to stay behind Buckingham Palace, which was hit hard by the heat and power failure at a time when London was in danger of indiscriminate bombing; to cooperate with the wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and finally usher in victory - this is how much The touching "Dance of Weight". It is conceivable that when the British people in the war heard the king who had a severe stutter, addressed them in difficult but clear language, calling on the people to persevere and pray for victory, their hearts were inspired. Let's also imagine that when the former King Duke of Windsor, who was relieved of his heavy responsibilities and brought his beauty back, stayed on the sidelines, listening to the touching speech delivered by his younger brother, who was once inferior to himself, and could not even speak clearly, and witnessed him become everyone's praise. When the good king accepted the cheers of the people, did he ever feel a little regret in his heart, and realized something in the pastoral songs of the so-called "unbearable lightness of life"?
About a "The King's Speech", I have written so much without knowing it. In the end, let's use a rhetoric that has already been said: heaviness is a kind of practice. This practice is the process of connecting life with essence. And all those who remain in the face of heavy responsibilities are their own kings.
2011-1-27
Värmö Sweden
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