REVIEWED - THE HISTORY BOYS: A love of learning infuses this powerful adaptation of Alan Bennett's hit play, writes Michael Dwyer
ADAPTED for the screen by Alan Bennett from his awards-laden stage play - with the original cast intact and director Nicholas Hytner returning for the film version - The History Boys is set at a Yorkshire grammar school in 1983, as eight bright young things get their A-level results and face into an intermediate term before taking the Oxbridge entrance exams.
That summer begins with Margaret Thatcher's landslide second election victory, as the conflict between humanist and utilitarian approaches to education comes to a head. A year earlier Alan Parker's movie of Pink Floyd The Wall had featured the anthemic song that declared "We don't need no education/We don't need no thought control".
The soundtrack of The History Boys draws on the finest British bands of the era (New Order, The Clash, The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure), but these schoolboys are more likely to sing Rodgers and Hart, to quote WH Auden or Thomas Hardy, and to re-enact scenes from such 1940s movies as Brief Encounter and Now Voyager.
This is the result of their liberal education in the unorthodox General Studies classes improvised by the rotund, avuncular teacher, Hector (endearingly drawn by Richard Griffiths), who shares a penchant for sly groping with the lecherous Uncle Monty played by Griffiths in Withnail & I. The boys don't take this seriously, and even the conservative headmaster (Clive Merrison) dismisses it as "more appreciative than exploratory".
Intent on results, the head recruits a young history scholar, Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), to groom the boys for their crucial exam,. His approach is methodical and cynical, entirely at odds with Hector's freewheeling style and with the rote repetition advocated by history teacher Mrs Lintott (Frances de la Tour).
The boys at the centre of this struggle for their hearts and minds are as credibly disparate as drama demands, and succinctly established in the movie's nimbly paced opening scenes. One is sexually precocious (Dominic Cooper). Another (Samuel Barnett) is gay, Jewish and besotted with him. There are boys who are religious and virginal (Jamie Parker), Muslim (Sacha Dhawan), overweight (James Corden), and a rugby star (Russell Tovey) whose academic prospects seem limited.
The consequences are frequently very funny, and ultimately warm and touching without ever resorting to cloying sentiment. The unfamiliarity of the young cast proves an asset, as they bring no baggage to their roles, and are all the more convincing for that. Barnett, in particular, is outstanding as the gay student, but the young actors perform with all the selflessness and interactive ease of a true ensemble cast.
Bennett displays a palpable affection for his characters that is infectious in a film marked by his characteristically acute observations on life's complexities, as it reflects on education, history, ambition and adolescence. It is graced with dialogue that is literate, sharp-witted and epigrammatic, and a world away from the banalities of most US college movies.
Making a welcome return to cinema, director Hytner treats the material and his cast with the respect they deserve, skilfully transferring the play to the screen without obtrusively opening it out just for the sake of it.
This is entertainment with a mind of its own.
