Free Republic

“The Kings Speech” is about a hero... who battles an invisible enemy that torments nearly 70 million people around the world. In demystifying the little-understood speech impediment, the award-winning film reveals myths and fascinating truths about stuttering, and has won praise from stutterers of all ages. For Erik Yehl, an 11-year-old ...who began stuttering in preschool, the movie’s powerful message is, “I’m not stupid.” It’s a stigma all people who stutter contend with — ...that because their words sometimes sputter or fail to come out..., their minds must be... mixed up. “People who stutter — their minds are perfectly good,...

As I sat in the theater watching the seats fill, row after row, I was reminded that people still love to be told a good story. And there is no medium that does this more powerfully than film. A fine example is the recently released "The King's Speech." It is extraordinary. A wonderful surprise. That it was ever made is remarkable. Imagine trying to pitch to a studio this very English film, set in the 1920s and 30s, about a shy man, Albert the Duke of York, albeit the future King of England, who possesses a stammer that has tormented...

You will love “The King’s Speech,” a new movie about Great Britain in the '30s, a time of hesitation and then greatness, when the country reluctantly faced up to the challenge of Hitler and Nazism, two years before the United States similarly faced up. As with many great films, “Speech” is a personal movie inside a historical movie. The “personal” movie is the story of a character struggling to overcome a disability. In “Speech,” the drama is the true story of the future King George VI, who had suffered from a severe stammer all his life. The story begins in...

There are many forms of irony – verbal, dramatic, situational and so on – but the one that surely applied to King George VI was the irony of fate. It was as if the gods, or Fates, were amusing themselves by toying with his mind, mocking his failings, reminding him that he was very much a mortal. It was, after all, almost impossible for him to pronounce the letter 'k’, thanks to his debilitating nervous stammer. A cruel fate for a king. Even crueller, his reign coincided with a revolution in mass communication. For the first time in British history,...