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Film review

Re-creating 'History'

The History Boys moves from the stage to the screen with the same cast and some subtle changes.

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published December 21, 2006

What can we learn from The History Boys? All knowledge is sacred, unless it's not; one man's poetry is another man's gobbet; and history is as much a way of forgetting as a way of remembering.

Based on the hit play by Alan Bennett, the movie version of The History Boys is a briskly paced, beautifully acted, witty celebration of the joy of learning. Although Florida schoolchildren might find this hard to believe, it's all well, mostly about how much fun it can be to study for an exam.

Set in a Yorkshire school in 1983, The History Boys centers on a group of eight talented students and the teachers who are helping them prepare for rigorous entrance exams to Britain's most elite universities, Cambridge and Oxford.

These young men aren't children of privilege but middle class strivers who need every trick they can muster. They already have one weapon of mass distinction: Hector, their English teacher, a polymath of heroic proportions whose whole life is his classroom.

Played by the magnificent Richard Griffiths, Hector is the kind of teacher every student remembers. He steeps his eager, wisecracking pupils in poetry and Latin, mixing it up with the "sheer calculated silliness" of music hall songs, movie skits and French lessons in which the boys act out a scene in a brothel.

The otherwise lonely Hector basks in his students' affection - until the school's dreadful headmaster (Clive Merrison) hires Irwin, a much younger, slicker, results-oriented teacher, to help coach the exam-bound boys.

Hector and Irwin's contest for the boys' minds has another dimension. Both men are gay, and both find themselves attracted to a student.

Hector explains that he sees such attractions as "inoculation" against falling in love; although he's known to cop a quick feel when he gives the boys rides on his motorbike, they calmly brush it off as a joke, and he never goes further. For Irwin, dealing with his sexuality is a greater struggle. For both, there are unexpected consequences.

The History Boys began as a hit play in London's National Theatre in 2004, and it repeated its success, with the same cast, on Broadway this year (it closed Oct. 1). Along the way, the play and its actors scooped up armfuls of theater awards.

The movie was filmed between the London and Broadway productions, also with the same cast members and the same director, Nicholas Hytner.

The eight actors who play the boys have genuine chemistry, firing off Bennett's wonderfully literate, funny lines like old pros. Standouts are Dominic Cooper as sloe-eyed, seductive Dakin, and Samuel Barnett, who is quietly devastating as the sensitive, self-aware odd boy out.

Frances de la Tour, who like Griffiths is a veteran of the Harry Potter movies, is splendidly acerbic as history teacher Dorothy Lintott, and Stephen Campbell Moore as Irwin is a stronger presence in the movie than he was on stage, skillfully revealing his character's unexpected complexities.

There are some significant differences between the play and the film. On stage, Hector was the dominant figure, while on screen the boys, several of whom have teen heartthrob potential, claim much more time. And the movie's conclusion is somewhat sunnier; the play has a darker, more ambivalent ending.

But even sweetened up for the screen, The History Boys is a bracing, profanely funny blast of intelligence.

The History Boys

Grade: A-

Director: Nicholas Hytner

Cast: Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances de la Tour, Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, Samuel Anderson, James Corden, Sacha Dhawan, Andrew Knott, Jamie Parker, Russell Tovey

Screenplay: Alan Bennett

Rating: R; strong language, sexually explicit dialogue

Running time: 109 min.

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 10:30:22]