Friday, May 18th, 2012
Nathan Goldberg is speechless (in a manner of speaking) at the Oscar disregard for the greatest film of the year starring Javier Bardem in Biutiful.
The King’s Speech is now widely tipped to scoop the Oscars at the Hollywood beano next month.
This is on the back of a double hit, carrying off the Directors Guild of America and Actors Guild awards at the weekend.
That it is a brilliantly mounted confection of one man’s struggle to beat his stammer is undeniable. The actors, particularly Colin Firth as George VI, are all in great form.
Pity it’s a load of shite. It is a feelgood movie about the most disreputable period in the British Royal family’s history during the 20th Century. And that’s saying something.
This Hitler encouraging menage, including the film’s hero, get off almost untouched apart from Prince Edward who gave up the Kingship for the woman he loved.
The movie looks upon this with great repugnance, almost forgetting that Edward’s greatest crime was (pictured above) supporting Hitler. Nothing is said about Elizabeth, George’s wife, a stuck up scheming anti semite. Instead she is portrayed as a good egg with a cut glass accent.
This writer loathes this bowelderisation of history to sell more popcorn, particularly if it looks the other way as evil passes by.
The movie that stands head and shoulders above anything I have seen over the last year is Biutiful, a slice of raw steak to the meringue of The King’s Speech.
The movie has divided critics but it is a masterpiece set on the edges of civilisation, the margins of Barcelona, a Barcelona few of us see, seething with the dispossessed, the poverty of immigrants and the inevitable street crime.
The man who makes it unforgettable is iconic Spanish actor Javier Bardem. In Biutiful, he plays a dying grifter, a low life criminal, an exploiter of immigrant labour, putting his life in order. It is unsentimental, not ending in waving from the Royal balcony, but it will tear at your heart.
Biutiful will win nothing of importance. It is in a foreign language, it is totally unglamorous, no palaces no frocks and it is about people most of the world would rather forget.
But it is by a country mile the best movie out there, and that is what matters long after the tall tales that delight the courtiers of King Oscar have been forgotten.
Have you seen the King’s Speech, were you knocked out by it or do you share the writer’s reservations and support for Javier Bardem in Biutiful? Comments welcome.
Nathan Goldberg, wowdewow CEO and Publisher, adores Spain. As for the Royal family….
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Tags: barcelona, best movie, biutiful, criminal, dispossessed, dying, exploiting immigrants, grifter, immigrants, javier bardemoscars, street crime, The King's Speech
Quite so. Queen Elizabeth, later the
Queen Mother – chided and characterised the decision of British electorate in 1945 general election – as the height of ingratitude (to Winston Churchill).
Never mind that most of them where treated little better than serfs and had all the attendant problems of serfs (ill-health, ignorance and illiteracy).
The trouble with HM, The Queen Mother, was she didn’t have the wit to realise why the public rejected the heroic Churchill by a landslide. She had no inkling of how her own subjects lived and she couldn’t have cared less.
I agree. Biutiful was the best film of the year for me, The Social Network was also fabulous, I found the Kings Speech very enjoyable and there was some lovely acting but it was but it was not groundbreaking or very important. Which I feel the Biutiful and The Social Network were.
You guys can’t be serious. I’ve seen both, speech is brill, who cares what the royals did with hitler. Biutiful is two hours of misery and a guy pissing blood.
At last, someone who actually talks sense. Colin Firth was far better in last year’s A Single Man and he really deserved an Oscar for that. His performance in the King’s Speech was amicable but nothing in comparison to Javier Bardem’s role in Biutiful. I totally agree, Biutiful was one of the most moving films of the year and Javier Bardem truly deserves to win on Sunday. I’m tired of critics and viewers alike who have labelled the film as ‘depressing’. Yes life is depressing sometimes, that doesn’t make the film bad and if you truly understand it, you will see that in the end, it is actually uplifting. I would rather see a true depiction of how we deal with the harsh realities of life than a film that polishes historical events (only to please viewers) in the way that The King’s Speech does.
and p.s. The best part of the Kings Speech is surely the end sequence which is mostly down to the heart bursting beauty of Beethoven’s 7th.