Anti-Climacus

When I went to see The King's Speech with some colleagues, our comments afterward were mostly focused on the historical oddities of the film: the way constitutional and historical issues are e-x-p-l-a-i-n-e-d very slowly so the American audience will be able to follow them or the odd appearance of Winston Churchill halfway through the film, as a recognizable figure who serves as Greek chorus. The absence of politics was noted but not expanded upon.

I find this argument about why the lack of politics is a severe problem for the film rather compelling. An excerpt:

Maybe it’s my Jewish-ness that prevents me from giving in fully to the iconic depiction of George VI. Yet that doesn’t make me angry or hyper-critical of the film; merely disappointed. If Bertie had doubts, to me that makes him so much more a conflicted and complex character; if that’s true, did he doubt more than just his ability to speak into a microphone? Did he doubt his own message at first, and come to realize later in the war that the fight against Germany was a fight for the greater good of the world? When trying to separate the issues within The King’s Speech, how do we evaluate such vagaries as the definitions of “embellishment” or “convenience”? How do we evaluate the personal nature of the script; does Seidler’s previously unsuccessful work mean he captured his own life’s lightning in a bottle, or that this talent was hidden beneath his lack of opportunities from major studios?

Am I being selfish in that the policies of the Nazi party are never confronted? Am I playing into a pre-conceived stereotype as the historically-hated Jew? One thing that’s universally true is that all of us able-bodied Israelites have ties to the war and Europe. Most of my family visited Israel, many to the concentration camps of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. My Grandmother never knew what happened to one of her uncles, he who went back to Poland to try and rescue family members only to never have returned. I’m not in deepest touch with my Jewish roots as some of you are, but try spending one solitary night tour in the near-empty United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Walking those sterile glass halls in sensory-depriving silence, in full view of humanity’s worst faculties, you are cognizant of the painful steps it took to birth the generations before you. It’s this that leaves me disappointed in The King’s Speech, disappointed that the perceived reason so many marshaled off to war, and others hid in the subways during air raids, is such a small footnote in what is being labeled as a great film with a greater message.

In other words, the movie wants giddy thrill of confronting Hitler without the messy reality of 1930s British politics.