Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush)’s Timeline and Summary

Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush)’s Timeline and Summary

  • Logue comes out of his office bathroom to find a woman waiting for him.
  • She wants to make an appointment for her husband at her house, but Logue says that everyone he treats has to come to his office. No exceptions.
  • The woman informs him that her husband is the Duke of York, but Logue still won't budge on his policies.
  • Bertie shows up and Logue gets him to put on headphones that are blaring classical music. He asks Bertie to read Hamlet into a microphone without hearing his own voice. Bertie gets fed up with the process and says he won't see Lionel again. But Lionel gives him the recording of his reading as a souvenir before he leaves.
  • We see Logue audition for a part in a Shakespeare play. But the people running the audition immediately dismiss him as being too old and too… Australian.
  • After Bertie has listened to the record of himself reading flawlessly, he returns to Logue's office and asks for a series of speech therapy sessions.
  • Lionel works with him and helps him overcome some of his worst difficulties.
  • The next time we see Bertie visit Logue, Bertie is upset because his stutter has come back badly after an altercation he had with his older brother.
  • Bertie is scared that England is going to hell because his brother is such a lousy king.
  • Logue tells Bertie that he could be a better king than his brother. But Bertie considers this comment to be treasonous.
  • He tells Logue to go away and calls him the disappointing son of a brewer. It looks like their relationship is on the rocks.
  • Logue really needs to step up and help Bertie after it becomes clear that Bertie will become King of England. They work hard together for Bertie's coronation.
  • Bertie confronts Logue about the fact that he (Logue) has no formal credentials as a speech therapist.
  • Logue explains that he has learned everything he knows from experience.
  • They get into a big argument that ends with Bertie demanding to be heard because he's a human being and he has a voice. This is the moment Logue has been waiting for, and it marks a huge leap forward in their relationship.
  • In the movie's final scene, Logue helps Bertie get through his first wartime speech, which goes well.
  • The movie's final disclaimers tell us that Logue and Bertie would go on to be friends for the rest of their lives.