The King's Speech (2010) and Beethoven

I had read that Colin Firth's big speech in The King's Speech is underscored with Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and during the montage sequence of the Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, I got a sample of that. Tom Hooper has used a trick here that is well-known to horror movie directors: Let the music do the work. Even I could make a scene emotional by using one of the greatest stretches of music ever written! It shows a curious lack of faith in your lead actor -- in a film devoted to the theme of vocal delivery, to boot -- to undercut his handling of this key scene by thus "sweetening" it. It also doesn't exactly demonstrate that you deserve your Best Director statuette. Most directors are very aware of the general truth that music is more inherently emotional than imagery, but most great directors provide a dynamic interplay between the music they use and the rest of what they put up on screen. Kubrick comes right to mind; Woody Allen with the Gershwin score of Manhattan, as well. Hooper's employment of the Beethoven, by contrast, strikes me as lazy and cliched.

The temptation is in some ways understandable, however. Beethoven, ahead of his time, is a wonderful film composer. I happen to be watching Bernard Rose's Immortal Beloved, which can use all the Beethoven it wants by virtue of being a film about Beethoven, and apart from Gary Oldman's rather madcap lead performance, what is most enjoyable about the movie is the director's partnership with the composer. The matching of the editing and camera movements to the Beethovenian rhythms is marvelous.