Lionel Logue to Berty
future King George VI
This movie SPEAKS to the heart of fear that binds the tongue for stammer-ers. Although the future King wants to remain in an official, formal relationship--not so for Lionel. Experience teaches him that stammering is learned and inherited. If he is to help the future King, he must release him from the fear that binds him.
King George VI: If I'm King, where's my power? Can I
form a government? Can I levy a tax, declare a war? No! And yet I am the seat
of all authority. Why? Because the nation believes that when I speak, I speak
for them. But I can't speak.
Lionel gets right down to business and the heart of the matter: "You don't have to be afraid of when you were five."
So how is Berty freed to be King George VI?
The grip of the past is broken by the friendship that forms between Lionel and Berty. Indeed! Berty believes and trusts more in Lionel than he fears the people of his past. In this friendship, Berty walks out of the past and speaks in the present with a new sense of self--no longer the victim, now the King to speak for his nation. Remember how he gave the speech--with Lionel present and speaking in the cadence of that relationship. Lionel looks like a band leader actually conducting his student he has come to regard so personally.
There could be no fitting lines for this relationship than when Bertie sits at the desk for the stock press photo by the microphone, and says to Lionel, "My friend" and Lionel steps back and says, "Your majesty...." Out of the friendship, a king comes into being and Lionel receives his credentials now recognized by the elite of the court.
Oh Really?
How painfully often do childhood fears nail us down with thousands of spikes? Don't miss the single most powerful irony in the movie. When Berty does tell Lionel what happened in his childhood, Lionel himself is "tongue tied" and mute. The past does strike the heart of fear strikes and imprisons the present. We don't need the technical name of phobia to know what it is when we live with its destructive power. So how is Berty freed to be King George VI?
The grip of the past is broken by the friendship that forms between Lionel and Berty. Indeed! Berty believes and trusts more in Lionel than he fears the people of his past. In this friendship, Berty walks out of the past and speaks in the present with a new sense of self--no longer the victim, now the King to speak for his nation. Remember how he gave the speech--with Lionel present and speaking in the cadence of that relationship. Lionel looks like a band leader actually conducting his student he has come to regard so personally.
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