This is a nice piece in the Guardian about stuttering/stammering — how Colin Firth gets it so exactly right:
There’s a moment in The King’s Speech, the new film about King George VI and his stutter, when the king (played by Colin Firth) meets his new speech therapist for the first time. The therapist is Australian-born Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush, and he informs HRH that “we need to relax your jaw muscles”. Firth swallows nervously, the tendons in his neck standing out, jaw muscles far from relaxed. He looks terrified, and eventually barks out one word: “Fine.”
It is a startling performance from Firth, though not many would know it. He has captured it perfectly: the fear, the dry, panicked swallow, the unendurable tension, the feeling that your jaw and/or throat is just about to seize up . . . I know this because I’ve been there; welcome to the world of the stutterer.
Meanwhile, The King’s Speech is getting raves on Twitter from people who are finally seeing it – some calling it the best film they’ve seen in a while, others reporting spontaneous clapping at the end.