Around this time last year, Tom Hooper's The King's Speech unexpectedly emerged from appearances at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals as an awards contender, ultimately taking home Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Colin Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (David Seidler). That victory over its perceived closest contender, Darren Aronofsky's dark and daring Black Swan, renewed arguments that the Academy tends to reward safe, middlebrow entertainment, especially when it revolves around British royalty.
There's no doubt that The King's Speech falls firmly into the broad category of 'respectful biographical portraits of royal historical personalities that tend to irritate modern commoners.' The film features very strong dramatic performances by Firth as King George VI, a royal personage with a stammer, and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, an Australian commoner and speech therapist. Focusing mainly on their personal stories, and tiptoeing gently around potentially more incendiary political issues, The King's Speech is sufficiently engaging while it's playing, but, beyond confirming that Firth, Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter (as the incoming Queen) are good actors, it doesn't resonate long in the memory.
Now along comes King George VI: The Man Behind The King's Speech, an assemblage of archival footage and new interviews that endeavors to tell the real story behind the film. Starting with his father, King George V, the documentary recounts the events that are portrayed in The King's Speech, and features original interviews with Firth, Hooper, royal correspondent Tim Ewart, author Peter Conradi, and Logue's grandson Mark Logue.
What the archival footage reveals is that political and/or royal speeches from decades ago are not riveting, in and of themselves. The interviews don't provide a contrary view to what The King's Speech recreated and fictionalized; their main purpose appears to be to serve as a supplement to the archival footage. For history buffs, this could well be fascinating. For film fans, there's some interest in hearing the real voice of King George VI, and the documentary fills us in on what the King did during World War II and his short life after the war ended.
The Region 1 DVD from Revolver Entertainment includes three extra bits of straight archival footage (no commentry or context), in addition to the 80-minute running time of the main feature.