The King's Speech
Director: Tom Hooper
Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter
****
Already a box-office phenomenon in the UK and now a 12-time Oscar nominee, The King's Speech arrives so laden with plaudits and panegyrics that it's sometimes hard to see the movie for the phenomenon.
Make no mistake, it is peerless entertainment, utterly impeccable in production and performance. But this mid-1930s-set portrait of the troubled King George VI (Firth) and how he managed to subdue his stammer with the aid of an Australian speech therapist called Lionel Logue (Rush) is certainly multi-layered. A second viewing, in fact, can be far more rewarding than the initial encounter. For in the latter case, what we meet, and what will inevitably scoop Oscars, is a prestige British period movie with a feel-good heart.
Here we are shown the first antagonistic meeting between the king - then the Duke of York - and Logue, as organised by the duke's doting wife Elizabeth (Bonham Carter). We soon witness the thawing of hostility between the two men, the softening of the irascible duke, and then eventually, after his coronation, the indelible bonding of the pair over the delivery of the title's Call to Arms speech in December 1939.
In this, of course, Firth and Rush make a fascinating double-act, with the former as dangerously brittle and explosive as the latter is soft and wisely malleable. Their scenes together, more fully blown psychotherapy than anything else, are as compelling as anything in previous therapy classics such as Ordinary People, Good Will Hunting or television's In Treatment. And it's these performances, more than the deft direction of Tom Hooper, or the production design of Eve Stewart (Logue's treatment room is a gorgeous garret of flaking brown walls and peeling green paper), that will be recognised during awards season (Firth already has a Golden Globe to his name, with a Bafta sure to follow).
However, there's more to The King's Speech than meets the eye. It's a complex movie of ideas made by a man, Hooper, who boasts of having a relaxed Australian mother and a once emotionally repressed English father. It is, says Hooper, his "most personal project to date", (he also directed The Damned United), and is fuelled by his desire to tackle both sides of his heritage. Thus this royal family are emotionally lacking (their paterfamilias, King George V, played by Michael Gambon, is a merciless bully), and burdened by their own stiff-upper-Englishness until Logue arrives. Logue saves the king from his own Englishness by injecting him with a dose of Australian bonhomie - he calls the king "Bertie", he repeatedly asks direct personal questions, and executes all manner of improprieties under the professional banner: "My house, my rules!" Here, at every turn, even as the film appears to be celebrating the British monarchy, it is also testing its limits.
And there are occasional flaws here too. Some of the lines are declarative and thudding, such as departing Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's ominous warning "I'm very much afraid that your greatest test has yet to come", while some performances, such as Timothy Spall's "panto"-worthy Winston Churchill, are simply way off the mark. But generally, and even when disentangled from the phenomenon it's become, this is a film of unusually high accomplishment.
For screening information, visit www.grandcinemas.com, www.cineroyal.ae, www.cinestarcinemas.com, www.reelcinemas.ae
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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