This one starts light, gets dark, then darker… and darker still. And all the while, you’re thinking it’s about to turn around and give you a happy ending. Well, life doesn’t have a happy ending I suppose (spoiler: we all die). And this movie drives that home pretty thoroughly.
Still, if you manage to look past the dreary outcome, there’s a lot of love and life among the gloom. Life’s not all bad… right?
How is it that I could be moved to care about the personal shortcomings of some monarch from over half a century ago? Because the story is presented as a human story… one of triumph over adversity. And it’s so well done, that anyone might relate to it.
This movie had a lot of elements done right. One in particular struck me – the lighting. In many of these period movies, we are presented with indoor scenes that are perfectly lit. But, reality isn’t that way. These grand old buildings are dark places reliant mostly on windows for light. Instead of creating fake lighting, the filmmakers figured out the best way to shoot with the available light (or faked it in more subtle ways). This combined with a liberal use of wide-angle shots developed a unique mood… as if the environment was another key character.
One thing I didn’t get at all though: In his first session with “the Doctor”, the future King’s stuttering is cured via a bit of a trick. Why couldn’t this same trick be used in the movie’s last scene? I was sitting there wondering why in the world they didn’t simply do this. It would not have made a very climatic movie arc, but certainly would have solved the problem at hand.
Believe it or not, the actual person who the movie is based on is 100 times more wacko than the character portrayed in the film. It was a great movie anyway, really put together well.
Ok, I’ll admit it, it was pretty good. But “picture of the year”? it wasn’t THAT good. I did like how the whole plot was constructed though, how it was all kind of a mirror of the Romeo and Juliet story. I liked the non-hollywood ending too.
By the way, count me in the camp who thinks someone else likely wrote the bulk of Shakespeare’s plays. Most likely Edward de Vere. It’s possible that Shakespeare did some serious editing and adding though; more so to some plays than others. I like the idea of an everyman Poet, but the evidence to the contrary is just too strong to ignore.
A well-done movie about the painter. I really liked the way they wove her paintings into the imagry of the film, like the paintings were Frida’s reflection of her reality (see it and you’ll know what I mean)…