The History Boys

So many moments in this film struck a chord with me. As a grammar school student applying for Oxbridge, I have to disagree with the previous reviewer. The worries and pressures, as well as the arrogance, humour (and sheer smart-aleckness) that surround the boys' dialogue perfectly capture the hilarity and torture of adolescence. The dialogue is a little stage-y, but that doesn't seriously tarnish its impact. I think this film expresses the uncertainty and risk involved in life in a way that is both poignant and witty; often both at the same time. Ideas about what education should really be could not be more beautifully expressed than in this picture of young boys with their whole lives stretched out in front of them, and old teachers still unsure of what it's all about. Subtle and brilliant.

The English duo of Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett last collaborated on 1994's Oscar and BAFTA winning THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE. This 2006 collaboration abbreviates Bennett's own 2004 Royal National Theatre play into a fast- moving account of how a group of Yorkshire teenagers from a state school pass the now defunct Oxford/Cambridge entrance exam. This is England in 1983. It's the zenith of Thatcherism. It was also the year of the film EDUCATING RITA, in which a working class housewife betters herself through an Open University degree. Things have obviously changed in the country since the Victorian times of Thomas Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE, where university is not a thing for the working class.

But the social, political and cultural milieu of the era is kept in the background (it's much less evocative than THIS IS ENGLAND, made the same year and also set in 1983). This is as much a fantasy of education as DEAD POET'S SOCIETY. These are classes full of the expectational, bright and articulate. Bennett never really finds the authentic voice of the 18-year olds - they speak the words of older, wiser men. But the performances - Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore and Frances De La Tour as the teachers tutoring them in various ways towards university and, amongst other a pre-stardom Domonic Cooper and James Corden as the students - are uniformly excellent. The dialogue is witty in its observations on the education system and the purpose of education. Bennett's own adaptation wisely drops the two flashes forward which opened the play's first and second acts (Campbell Moore's character as a TV historian in the present day).

I had the good fortune to see a preview of this film at Picturehouse Greenwich - the best cinema in London. I had seen the play in London so was expecting to be disappointed at seeing the film of the History Boys on the screen. However,I am pleased to report it is a fantastic film. Great characters, far too many good performances to pick any one person as best actor. The boys and staff of the school were fantastic and totally believable. Not quite how life was when I was at school, but I imagine many grammar schools in the 1980's were the same.

I laughed out loud and cried and left the cinema with a smile on my face.

A must see

"History is just one f-----g thing after another." Rudge in The History Boys

The above quote from the athletic, anti-intellectual Rudge in Alan Bennett's London and Broadway hit, The History Boys, is the antithesis of the high-minded quotes and philosophies spouted by teachers and aspiring "Oxbridge" scholars at a public grammar school in Yorkshire. Yet the quote epitomizes the sub-textual disdain for intellectual snobbery and solipsism that hangs about academic institutions anywhere, anytime.

History can be an accumulation of facts that have power in their reality ("This is Oxford and Cambridge. You don't just need to know it backwards. Facts. Facts. Facts."). Or it can be a set of insights into the human condition whose power derives from the understanding one extracts from them ("All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use."). This film reveals the tension between those poles of learning and the in-between state of wisdom.

It's 1983 in a boys' public grammar in Yorkshire as the gifted "history boys" prepare for their "Oxbridge" exams for entrance to Oxford or Cambridge. The months before the exams will put them in hyper drive as the results-oriented headmaster vies with the portly sensibility teacher, Hector, who believes more in the experience of education than the quantifiable outcomes. Memorized lines from Keats or learning French by acting out a scene in a brothel is his preferred mode.

The latent and sometimes overt homosexuality, not a stranger to boys' school, is handled as just another learning experience for boys and teachers, at least those couple of teachers such a Hector who are known to prefer boys. The sexual orientation is as much figurative for decisions that must be made and the experience that will bring understanding of life's unpredictability, not just historical facts. The acceptance and casualness of the issue stretches credulity, but not as metaphor.

The transition to film from stage is no always smooth: Some scenes are played directly into the camera; others are static, less fluid on screen than under the proscenium arch. But who cares with all that inspired dialogue? If you love to hear English as it was meant to be spoken, albeit highly stylized, and young people grappling with big ideas, see The History Boys.

The History Boys is a very very challenging film for any audience. One of these reasons is that it is driven by extremely eloquent conversations between younger and elder intellectuals, each conversation delving aggressively deep into the corners of conventional logic and subtexts and fleshing them out in what different characters arguably believe are the most truthful ways. Many characters are quite confident and extremely extroverted and the ones who are not so confident are defensively so. Alan Bennett's remarkably clear analysis of the human condition is intimidating.

The other reason is because the story is one beyond social judgment. Perhaps this is purposeful because being written, produced, directed, and acted by English people, class-consciousness is surely existent among them. But that's what I love so much about this film. The audience, in order to understand and enjoy it, must release themselves from the scrutiny of general culture over many, mostly sexual, aspects of life. The film is not about homosexuality, but homosexual goings-on exist prevalently in the story. It's also treated very nonchalantly, and many straight boys are free of any personal sexual burdens that would inhibit them from partaking. The very talked-about homosexual element of the film exists as the most direct example and also the core of the basis of the story, which is the pressure of society's judgmental and devastatingly interfering nature with many things that, if one were truly understanding, would not judge or interfere with. This extends to greater and more complex idealism in the script, such as the philosophy and meaning of education, the satisfactory or unsatisfactory pursuit and outcome of success, the importance of art and poetry, and the point of studying history.

I believe that The History Boys is an extremely important movie, and the fact that it lasted for a single week at a small theater here in Cincinnati is despicable and glaringly, stupidly contradictory to its message.