“A Major Desecration”
Christopher Hitchens‘ 1.24 Slate piece about The King’s Speech is not some rash smear job. It’s a sensible and researched argument that deserves a read by every Oscar blogger and Academy member. He’s a Brit who knows his British history — he’s Christopher effin’ Hitchens — and he’s explaining quite simply and clearly that King George VI (a.k.a. “Bertie”), former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the Windsors all leaned toward appeasement at a crucial time in British history. So’s what’s with all the pride and glory at the end of The King’s Speech?
“It is suggested [in The King's Speech] that, once some political road bumps have been surmounted and some impediments in the new young monarch’s psyche have been likewise overcome, Britain is herself again, with Winston Churchill and the king at Buckingham Palace and a speech of unity and resistance being readied for delivery.
“Here again, the airbrush and the Vaseline are partners. When Chamberlain managed to outpoint the coalition of the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and the Churchillian Tories and to hand to his friend Hitler the majority of the Czechoslovak people, along with all that country’s vast munitions factories, he received an unheard-of political favor. Landing at Heston Airport on his return from Munich, he was greeted by a royal escort in full uniform and invited to drive straight to Buckingham Palace. A written message from King George VI urged his attendance ‘so that I can express to you personally my most heartfelt congratulations…[T]his letter brings the warmest of welcomes to one who, by his patience and determination, has earned the lasting gratitude of his fellow countrymen throughout the Empire.’
“Chamberlain was then paraded on the palace balcony, saluted by royalty in front of cheering crowds. Thus the Munich sell-out had received the royal assent before the prime minister was obliged to go to Parliament and justify what he had done. The opposition forces were checkmated before the game had begun.
“Britain does not have a written Constitution, but by ancient custom the royal assent is given to measures after they have passed through both houses of Parliament. So Tory historian Andrew Roberts, in his definitively damning essay ‘The House of Windsor and the Politics of Appeasement,’ is quite correct to cite fellow scholar John Grigg in support of his view that by acting as they did to grant pre-emptive favor to Chamberlain, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter to you) ‘committed the most unconstitutional act by a British Sovereign in the present century.’
“The private letters and diaries of the royal family demonstrate a continued, consistent allegiance to the policy of appeasement and to the personality of Chamberlain. King George’s forbidding mother wrote to him, exasperated that more people in the House of Commons had not cheered the sellout. The king himself, even after the Nazi armies had struck deep north into Scandinavia and clear across the low countries to France, did not wish to accept Chamberlain’s resignation. He ‘told him how grossly unfairly he had been treated, and that I was genuinely sorry.’
“Discussing a successor, the king wrote that ‘I, of course, suggested [Lord] Halifax.’ It was explained to him that this arch-appeaser would not do and that anyway a wartime coalition could hardly be led by an unelected member of the House of Lords. Unimpressed, the king told his diary that he couldn’t get used to the idea of Churchill as prime minister and had greeted the defeated Halifax to tell him that he wished he had been chosen instead. All this can easily be known by anybody willing to do some elementary research.
“In a few months, the British royal family will be yet again rebranded and relaunched in the panoply of a wedding. Terms like ‘national unity’ and ‘people’s monarchy’ will be freely flung around. Almost the entire moral capital of this rather odd little German dynasty is invested in the post-fabricated myth of its participation in ‘Britain’s finest hour.’
“In fact, had it been up to them, the finest hour would never have taken place. So this is not a detail but a major desecration of the historical record — now apparently gliding unopposed toward a baptism by Oscar.”
Jeff’s takedown begins…
Wells to JR: Did you read the friggin’ article? Read it and think it over before you start in with your “here goes another takedown attempt” crap. I don’t hate The King’s Speech at all. It’s a very finely made and well acted film. But when you think about what really happened at the highest British government levels in the late 1930s, it does make it seem as if Bertie’s triumphant moment at the end of the film is more than a bit of a diversion. A man learns to speak clearly enough in front of a mike — fine. But what was the actual content of the words he said and wrote regarding the worst-ever threat to Britain’s existence?
I thought the movie was great, but when I read more about the real history, it might have made it better by sticking to more facts, like Churchill not being on Bertie’s side.
I think THE KING’S SPEECH is wildly over rated and agree with Jeff that it would fit in nicely for the best films of 1992. It’s good, but safe. It’s something I would easily recommend to my Grandma. That being said, even if everything Hitchens writes is true, and I do not doubt that it is, what does it have to do with anything? Should it really affect who wins an award? I would hope not.
I’ve heard that “The Social Network” also takes many liberties with the truth.
Wait a minute… somebody’s outside my window… hey! They have a gun!… STOP!…… body filled with bullets…. life draining from me…… ability to type waning….. aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
—-PAY NO ATTENTION TO “ACTIONLOVER”‘S ABOVE POST—- —NOTHING TO SEE THERE—
In other news, I’ve heard from a reliable source that Colin Firth is a pederast and that Tom Hooper once killed a man just to watch him die. Just sayin’.
After one paragraph my head started hurting.
Wells to actionlover: You say the same thing every time, reducing everything to mock-angry machismo. Read the article and actually engage your brain in the particulars for a change.
Apparently you’d have to be God to be held in a disdain that matches Hitchens’ disdain for the royals. (Get it? An outspoken atheist.)
Nevertheless, he may be correct about the history, given the accuracy of hindsight not available to the contemporaries.
But, as actionlover says, why do we not see an equally detailed takedown of The Social Network, and why would that not be equally disqualifying? I didn’t like that damn film. Even if Sorkin doesn’t snort the coke any more, he didn’t forget how to get in that groove, and it’s just not interesting.
“The King’s Speech” is a very pleasant fairy tale, and any critical discussion of it ought to acknowledge that fact. Hitchens’ is an historically accurate view, but in the end, it’s just as big a piece of critical grandstanding as that idiot Roger Simon’s bluster that “those stupid liberals don’t even believe their own stupid liberalism and thus they’re honoring a pro Royal, anti fascist film, horray for our side.” It’s just a lot of agenda driven sound and fury designed, among other things, to fuel threads such as this one. A perpetual motion noise machine, the internet sure is that…
Jeff I read it. Did you?
Edward was the nazi sympathizer, not George VI. TKS doesn’t glorify any of the Windsors, and it paints a fairly accurate picture of Edward as a dilettante not up to the job of king, and the throne was forced upon the reluctant Bertie.
Are you similarly aware of FDR’s tacit appeasement of the Nazis in the late 30s? Or that FDR didn’t lift a finger to save the jews from nazi atrocities until late in the war?
None of the leaders of the west look very good in the harsh light of the 20/20 historical retrospection cast upon the 1930s by modern historians.
If you insist upon holding up movies to the standard of documentary history, please at least be even handed in criticism of the inaccuracies and deceptions in Sorkin’s screenplay for TSN.
Yeah, but what about the king’s Asian girlfriend? Totally acted like she didn’t exist.
Yeah because not having an Asian in the girlfriend in the film REALLY equals hiding someone who is a Nazi sympathizer. Because you know, we don’t still hunt down and hold Nazi sympathizers accountable for their crimes. We believe in forgiving and forgetting!
Big difference. The King’s Speech pretends to tell part of history, not just history but WWII history. Revisionism, we know, is common in Hollywood films – it’s nothing new. Just to point out they are NOT the same. At all.
But p.s. it won’t hurt the film at all – in fact it will make people want to rush to defend it and thus, vote for it. Win/win for the Weinstein Co.
Wells, Wells, Wells…
When people complain about the lack of historical accuracy in TKS, you pass along their articles — “See? Read the article, they glossed over the truth and fictionalized real events!”
When people complained that TSN glossed over the truth and fictionalized real events — your reaction was, if I recall, “So what? It made for a more compelling story that way! Who could REALLY know what life was like at Harvard in the early 21st century?”
There’s a difference between “Nazi sympathizer,” which King George VI wasn’t (but his brother Edward allegedly was), and “Nazi appeaser,” which King George VI and Neville Chamberlain reportedly were during the late ’30s.
Jeff:
And if TKS had been a movie about Neville Chamberlain that glossed over his Nazi appeasement, you and Hitchens would have a point.
Yeah but….but….. you see……
History shmistory! “The Social Network” just HAS to win Best Picture!
I have no reason to not believe Hitchens’s take. He’s a smart man who has no doubt done much more research than me (which is none), but it has nothing to do with the quality of The King’s Speech as a film.
I’ve said this before (mostly from my years spent as an Oliver Stone defender), but a narrative film (i.e. non-documentary) based on real people owes absolutely nothing to the actual historical record. As soon as you have a bunch of actors pretending to be other people, there’s a sheen of phoniness attached to everything on screen, and most people are smart enough to understand that. You’re never going to hear someone saying, “Nazi appeaser? That can’t be. He was so honorable in that Colin Firth movie,” because people understand the concept of dramatic license. George VI could’ve been into young boys, and my opinion on the film would remain unchanged.
Fair enough, alynch, but what about a movie about Mark Zuckerberg, who is only really a “public figure” in the most tangential sense of the word?
I’ve heard a lot of people call him “an asshole” and “fucking greedy” based almost entirely off of what’s onscreen in TSN. What else do people have to go by? A 60 Minutes interview? It’s not like there are years worth of history to study on him, either, he’s only been alive for twenty-five fucking years!
Curious as to your take on the ethics of Social Network because I generally agree with your point that narrative film should stand alone from “the facts,” and I too applaud the cinema of Ollie Stone (at least until it started sucking).
@alynch: “I’ve said this before (mostly from my years spent as an Oliver Stone defender), but a narrative film (i.e. non-documentary) based on real people owes absolutely nothing to the actual historical record.”
I disagree, but maybe this is all just semantics. People get defensive over the idea of an ethical obligation, as if to argue for one is equivalent to saying it should be legislated or otherwise coerced.
Movies should be free to be misrepresent history just as people should be free to be unprovoked assholes to others. But it would make for a better world if they didn’t.
“George VI could’ve been into young boys, and my opinion on the film would remain unchanged.”
Did the question of history affect your opinion of Mississippi Burning, either in ethical or qualitative terms? (I’m not suggesting it necessarily should have, just probing for consistency here.)
OK, Jeff, if we’re going to hold The King’s Speech to the fire for historical inaccuracy (which, by the way, I think we should), then we must also hold The Social Network (my vote for Best Picture) accountable for the very same reason.
TSN, factually, is incomplete. Anyone close to the Facebook situation, or at least knowledgeable, knows that Mezrich took tremendous liberties with his story. Therefore, so did Sorkin.
Doesn’t make the film any less brilliant but the criticisms being hurled at The King’s Speech (rightfully so) should also be directed at TSN.
My view is, we should never go to the movies for our history lessons. But you can’t have it both ways, running stories on King’s inaccuracy while completely shunning the similar inaccuracy of TSN.
Hitchens, neo-con and pre-emptive war supporter that he is (along with being a great writer) totally misses the point here.
George VI, whose ability to influence any British decision was hindered by the country’s famously unwritten constitution, worked with the then-current British leadership to do exactly what any leader should do in such a situation – he kept his country out of war until it was absolutely necessary. His brother lost the crown as much because his attitude towards Hitler veered past pragmatism into utter admiration as he did because he was fucking an American divorcee.
George VI couldn’t anticipate Hitler’s eventual designs on Britain any more than Hitchens anticipated the gigantic clusterfuck that Iraq became for the better part of a decade. He was more directly involved in the eventual British victory than any monarch has been in any policy decision since. The film’s not entirely accurate in a lot of ways but faulting George VI for not making a stand against Hitler sooner is totally misunderstanding the role of the monarchy and ignoring what he did for the duration of the war.
Kaned, I would say that it’s unfortunate if anyone forms an opinion on Zuckerberg based solely on his film portrayal, but the responsibility falls on the people forming those opinions rather than on the filmmakers, and lack of alternative information is no excuse. Even if there isn’t much else to go by, people should realize that only having a film to go by is almost the same as having nothing to go by and temper their opinions accordingly.
I’m hoping for a King’s Speech sweep. Not because I think it deserves it, but because this blog will be a fun read the day after.
How can anyone root for the Steelers with a rapist at quarterback?
There’s a difference between “Nazi sympathizer,” which King George VI wasn’t (but his brother Edward allegedly was),
Allegedly? There’s no allegedly here. Wallis was also having Von Ribbentroff, on the off days from the King. They palled around with Franco, she also had an affair with Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, and The Windsors spouted happy support for Hitler even while they were sent to the Bahamas to cause no further embarrasment to the Crown. That smirky, stupid bastard wanted to be King again so much, he sold his little soul to the Nazis and would have been their smiling puppet.
Appeasement, or whatever we might call it today, was a last gasp for peace. FDR did it. And how many people went up in smoke because of that?
I just watched the History channel’s show on King Edward and it was a real eye-opener. That guy (and Wallis) were very dangerous Nazi supporters. All people remember is he left the throne for “the woman he loved.” Wow.
As Glenn Kenny succinctly observed, Hitchens is an equally questionable source if you’re a truth-seeker. Both camps are all fire & fury – good for giggles at best.
But I do reject the stance that it’s dramatically acceptable to significantly misrepresent pivotal moments in history because it serves a movie well.
(Unless its A Knight’s Tale, when its kinda cool to see armour clad dudes enjoying Queen songs, but then, the movie wasnt represented as an accurate account of the writing of The Canterbury Tales, so it’s a poor example).
I also don’t buy the assertion that if the audience believe what they see on screen, its their own stupid fault. There’s a greater duty on mainstream movie makers to stick to Richard Donner’s “verisimilitude” ethos….unless connecting with their audience isnt important to them.
Its all so un-necessary anyhoo. If the story is important enough, or entertaining enough, to be worth telling, just make a differently framed movie….not one mis-sold as a seemingly honest account of actual events. (call him “King Hubert of Moldovia” or some such gibberish instead)
The only exception to the verisimilitude rule should be if messing with the audience is the movie’s raison d’etre. (Killing Hitler in Tarantino’s latest?).
But being a contrarian, I see no issue with misrepresenting or second guessing Zuckerberg’s character in TSN. In this case we’ve got a master story teller presenting “a viewpoint” of a recent social phenomenon which is still muddy for many of us. And I saw a lot in Eisenberg’s performance to let me empathise with Zuckerberg. TSN wasnt a dishonest movie. TKS is.
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