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The History Boys
January 16, 2007
by Steve Walker
Despite the fact that the morbidly incurious George W. Bush is a graduate of Yale, that college still shares with Harvard the status of being one of America’s premier institutions of higher learning. In Great Britain, the equivalent schools are Oxford and Cambridge; a degree from either almost certainly ensures that the alumni will be headed down a fairly gilded path. The process of getting into Oxford and Cambridge—and, frankly, most English colleges—is a painstaking ordeal that can encumber the smartest of blokes and leave their teachers in unattractive pools of angst.
Such is the seemingly stuffy plot of The History Boys, Nicholas Hytner’s screen adaptation of the Alan Bennett play that in the previous Broadway season, won more Tony Awards than any other play in 50 years. (For musicals, the highest Tony count goes to .) But audiences dismissive of the surface blueprint will miss some of the sharpest writing and acting of any film this year. And it doesn’t hurt that the film radiates the palpable homoeroticism that even the gayest of Netflix queues lacks.
The eight boys cramming for their exams make up an entertaining hodgepodge of “types” but avoid falling into the stereotypes for students seen in most films set in high school. The two given the most screen time and depth of story are Posner (Samuel Barnett), the youngest of the lot and the most sensitive, given his burgeoning yet unhidden homosexuality; and Dakin (Dominic Cooper), the school’s dark-eyed Romeo and understandable object of Posner’s romantic longing. Though the other boys get their share of quick lines and humorous antics, it’s Posner and Dakin who lend the story its heart and testosterone.
No learning takes place in a vacuum, and Bennett proves this brilliantly in the brain of the piece: the trio of teachers whose life’s purpose year by year is to see their charges get into the good schools. The boys’ favorite is Hector, played with heartbreaking gravity by Richard Griffiths, who won the 2006 Tony for Best Actor. His teaching style encompasses the stodgy dates and battles of yore that will surely appear on their exams but also, out of nowhere, the Bette Davis movie Now, Voyager and the composing team of Rodgers and Hart. In one lovely scene, an inspired Posner sings “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” to Dakin right in front of their classmates; Dakin’s response is to unquestioningly lap up the attention.
Another established member of the faculty is the snarky, ultrafeminist Mrs. Lintott, played with a bitchy sense of world-weariness by the British theater legend Frances de la Tour (who also copped a Tony). The chaff in the wheat enters in the form of a young upstart teacher, Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), whose mode of teaching is more black and white than grey. Though he could be accused of teaching to the test, he does prod the boys to think a little harder and, in Dakin’s sex-obsessed brain, to wonder about Irwin’s late-night activities once the classrooms go empty.
As fun as Hector is in class, he’s got an unpardonable bad habit. He often gives the boys rides home on the back of his motorbike and at regular intervals reaches around to grab their genitals. The boys are immune to the fondling by senior year; in fact, they joke about who’s riding the bike next, and when it’s their turn they simply shrug and don the helmet. When Hector is spotted groping one of them, the headmaster’s phone starts jangling and Hector is, not without cause, promptly canned (or “made redundant,” as being fired is called in England).
Somewhat surprisingly (but not really), the boys protest Hector’s impending termination with a sincerity that makes his straying hands almost beside the point. What’s fascinating to American eyes is how matter-of-factly and unhysterically it’s handled. The movie is both a brainy antidote to the bulk of stupid Hollywood fare and, in the case of sexy Dominic Cooper, a potent aphrodisiac. (Even Irwin, the new teacher, is made to believe he has the hots for him.)
Having seen the play in New York in August with the very same cast now recreating their work on screen, I will say that the piece was more electric on stage. But its wit, smarts, and, yes, hotness are in fine form.
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