Movie Review: The History Boys
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that kids, even older teens, probably
won't be very interested in this small, talky British film
based on Alan Bennett's award-winning play. Several central
characters -- both students and teachers -- are homosexual and
struggling with their desires. Treated in a mature way, this
theme is addressed through clever, occasionally explicit
dialogue (but no graphic imagery). The movie doesn't outright
condemn the teachers' desire or suggest that the boys are
damaged when one awkward instructor regularly "handles their
nuts." In one scene, a student takes off his trousers (you see
boxers) to act out a skit in class; in another, he's in bed
with a female secretary (they're talking, post-sex, no explicit
nudity). A fatal traffic accident occurs off-screen, and
characters mourn the resulting death. Characters smoke and use
"f--k" and strong other language.
Families can talk about the differences between the students'
and teachers' ambitions. How do the boys learn to make use of
their two teachers' different styles of learning? How do the
boys "come of age" in different ways? Also, how does the movie
show multiple points of view through conversations and
camerawork? And how do the movie's dialogue and staging show
that it was based on a play? How is the movie's treatment of
its characters' homosexuality similar to and different from the
way sexuality is addressed in other movies and TV shows?
Much as Hector (Richard Griffiths) enjoys his work, which he sees as opening young minds to new ideas, the affable teacher at Cutler's Grammar School in Sheffield, England, feels frustrated. A not-so-closeted gay man, he admires his young male students in ways he's not supposed to. His students appreciate his entertainments, as well as his appreciation of them. In exchange, over the years they've learned to take turns allowing him to touch their "thighs" during rides home on his motorbike. The boys' grades are good enough that they might get into Oxford and Cambridge, so the headmaster (Clive Merrison) brings in an additional teacher to give them "polish and edge." The much younger, Cambridge-educated Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) teaches by a different method. Where Hector wants the boys to feel invested in what they learn, Irwin suggests that they take adversarial positions just to look smart, whether they believe them or not.
Set in 1983, THE HISTORY BOYS has a certain stagey feel: Characters speak in perfectly overlapping dialogue and clever quips. For the most part, the boys are a collection of token types: rowdy playboy Dakin (Dominic Cooper), gay and sensitive Posner (Samuel Barnett), black Crowther (Samuel Anderson), Muslim Akhtar (Sacha Dhawan), white jock Rudge (Russell Tovey), wisecracking Lockwood (Andrew Knott), overweight Timms (James Coden). While each offers an occasional pithy observation to sum up a moment (the most memorable being Rudge's remark that history is "just one f--king thing after another"), as a group, they seem like the result of a one-from-every-food-group casting call.
Surveying the proceedings from the position designated "outside" by virtue of her gender, history teacher Dorothy Lintott (the excellent Frances de la Tour, who, like Griffiths, has also been seen in the Harry Potter movies) lays out the film's simultaneous awareness and exploitation of its own limits. "Imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude," she declares. "History is not such a frolic for women as it is for men. ... History is women following behind, with a bucket."
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