The History Boys
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Mister Tee
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I assume most people had, like me, written this one completely off, but maybe we were premature. Thie film has got MUCH better reviews in NY than I'd anticipated -- fairly enthusiastic notices from Edelstein in New York, Denby in The New Yorker, Scott in the Times, Stuart in Newsday and (less meaningful) Rex Reed in the Observer. The only dissenter was Jack Matthews (2 1/2 stars) in the Daily News.
I'm not saying thsi remakes the landscape. But maybe De La Tour can compete in the thinnish supporting actress field, and the screenplay could also have a shot.
I'm not saying thsi remakes the landscape. But maybe De La Tour can compete in the thinnish supporting actress field, and the screenplay could also have a shot.
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Sonic Youth
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The History Boys
Geoffrey Macnab in London
Screendaily
Dir: Nicholas Hytner. UK. 2006. 112mins.
It is hard to begrudge a film as well written and acted as The History Boys. Nicholas Hytner’s screen adaptation of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play is buoyed by some tremendous performances, one or two of which look very likely to be nominated for major awards. The writing is superb. Nonetheless, in cinematic terms, this is not an especially lithe nor imaginative reworking of the original material, with little of the visual wit that characterised Bennett and Hytner’s earlier screen collaboration, The Madness Of King George (1994).
But one guesses that audiences won’t be too bothered by some of its contrivances: after all, it seems petty to quibble in the face of Richard Griffiths’ bravura turn as Hector, the English teacher. If Hytner set out to provide a platform for his actors and to bring Bennett’s play to a wider audience, then he has succeeded brilliantly. Made on a lowish budget between the end of the UK theatrical run and its transfer to Broadway, it preserves on celluloid what is bound to be regarded in future years as a vintage British stage production.
Snapped up for worldwide distribution by 20th Century Fox, who will doubtless be giving it a big push during the awards season, The History Boys has bypassed the autumn festival circuit, reportedly because the play’s Broadway run made the cast available to promote the feature.
In the UK, where it opens on Oct 13 just after the Broadway run ends, and where Alan Bennett is considered a national treasure, it will be warmly received. The key question is whether it can cross over and attract the younger mainstream cinemagoers that the upbeat marketing materials suggest it wishes to draw.
Fox Searchlight will release the film in the US in late November, where it should appeal to the same upscale American audiences who relished the work of other celebrated British stage directors turned film-makers, including Richard Eyre (Stage Beauty, Iris) and Stephen Daldry (The Hours).
As the story begins, eight teens at Cutler’s Grammar School in the north of England are preparing to sit their Oxbridge examination. They’re a mixed bunch, ranging from the good-looking and insolent Dakin (Cooper) to the gruff, inarticulate Rudge (Tovey), whose main hope of acceptance to Oxford or Cambridge lies in his prowess at sport.
Alan Bennett has few peers when it comes to honing in on the nuances of British society. Here, in typically graceful and understated fashion, he explores hypocritical British attitudes not only toward education, but also class, sex (in particular, homosexuality) and ambition.
The History Boys draws a sharp distinction between Griffiths’ Hector, an avuncular, sardonic and extremely rotund figure who looks as if he might have sprung from the pages of Charles Dickens; and the ultra-aggressive new teacher Irwin (Campbell Moore), who has been hired to push the boys through their examination.
Hector teaches for the glory of it. He may be “pissing away his life” in a godforsaken” school, but his lessons are eccentric mini-adventures in which he genuinely tries to broaden the pupils’ understanding, whether or not it helps them pass exams. Irwin, by contrast, is glib in the extreme.
With its brittle, witty dialogue and multi-layered characterisation, The History Boys is very different from the typical teen movie. What it captures supremely well is the constant shift in power between the teachers and their students. Ironically, the former are the most vulnerable. Stuck in jobs from which there is no obvious escape, they are harassed by a petty-minded headmaster (Merrison), whose only concern is bolstering the reputation of the school by getting as many boys as possible into Oxford and Cambridge.
As they realise, the boys “know everything”, be it the sexual peccadillos of the teachers (for instance, Hector’s habit of stroking the boys’ knees) or their frustration at their career prospects, Dayton and company hone in intuitively on every weakness. The boys may be precocious but they are also more tolerant than the adults; they certainly don’t judge Hector in the way that the headmaster does.
On one level, it is also a daring and potentially even controversial feature, portraying Hector - a teacher who doesn't conceal his attraction to the pupils in his charge - in a sympathetic light, and his attempts to lure the boys onto the back of his motorbike are shown as comic rather than sinister. The storytelling could have taken on a seedier, sadder undertow with another actor in the role. As it is, Griffiths dominates the film, and those who remember him with fondness as Uncle Monty in Withnail & I will find even more to cherish here. His performance utterly galvanises what might otherwise have seemed an overly cautious adaptation.
One of the strengths of British cinema has always been its character actors. It is heartening to find a film in which a stock type - the eccentric, blustering teacher - isn’t just treated as comic relief but is given real emotional depth.
Of the support, Frances De La Tour delivers a touching characterisation of Mrs Lintott, the ever-exasperated history teacher, while Clive Merrison is enjoyable as the headmaster.
Such positives help overcome some of the film’s technical shortcomings. The recreation of northern England in the early 1980s is dour, drab and a little clumsy, while the continual use of pop music from the era risks grating. Certain devices – like the postscript in which we learn what subsequently became of the protagonists - can’t but feel stilted on screen.
Geoffrey Macnab in London
Screendaily
Dir: Nicholas Hytner. UK. 2006. 112mins.
It is hard to begrudge a film as well written and acted as The History Boys. Nicholas Hytner’s screen adaptation of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play is buoyed by some tremendous performances, one or two of which look very likely to be nominated for major awards. The writing is superb. Nonetheless, in cinematic terms, this is not an especially lithe nor imaginative reworking of the original material, with little of the visual wit that characterised Bennett and Hytner’s earlier screen collaboration, The Madness Of King George (1994).
But one guesses that audiences won’t be too bothered by some of its contrivances: after all, it seems petty to quibble in the face of Richard Griffiths’ bravura turn as Hector, the English teacher. If Hytner set out to provide a platform for his actors and to bring Bennett’s play to a wider audience, then he has succeeded brilliantly. Made on a lowish budget between the end of the UK theatrical run and its transfer to Broadway, it preserves on celluloid what is bound to be regarded in future years as a vintage British stage production.
Snapped up for worldwide distribution by 20th Century Fox, who will doubtless be giving it a big push during the awards season, The History Boys has bypassed the autumn festival circuit, reportedly because the play’s Broadway run made the cast available to promote the feature.
In the UK, where it opens on Oct 13 just after the Broadway run ends, and where Alan Bennett is considered a national treasure, it will be warmly received. The key question is whether it can cross over and attract the younger mainstream cinemagoers that the upbeat marketing materials suggest it wishes to draw.
Fox Searchlight will release the film in the US in late November, where it should appeal to the same upscale American audiences who relished the work of other celebrated British stage directors turned film-makers, including Richard Eyre (Stage Beauty, Iris) and Stephen Daldry (The Hours).
As the story begins, eight teens at Cutler’s Grammar School in the north of England are preparing to sit their Oxbridge examination. They’re a mixed bunch, ranging from the good-looking and insolent Dakin (Cooper) to the gruff, inarticulate Rudge (Tovey), whose main hope of acceptance to Oxford or Cambridge lies in his prowess at sport.
Alan Bennett has few peers when it comes to honing in on the nuances of British society. Here, in typically graceful and understated fashion, he explores hypocritical British attitudes not only toward education, but also class, sex (in particular, homosexuality) and ambition.
The History Boys draws a sharp distinction between Griffiths’ Hector, an avuncular, sardonic and extremely rotund figure who looks as if he might have sprung from the pages of Charles Dickens; and the ultra-aggressive new teacher Irwin (Campbell Moore), who has been hired to push the boys through their examination.
Hector teaches for the glory of it. He may be “pissing away his life” in a godforsaken” school, but his lessons are eccentric mini-adventures in which he genuinely tries to broaden the pupils’ understanding, whether or not it helps them pass exams. Irwin, by contrast, is glib in the extreme.
With its brittle, witty dialogue and multi-layered characterisation, The History Boys is very different from the typical teen movie. What it captures supremely well is the constant shift in power between the teachers and their students. Ironically, the former are the most vulnerable. Stuck in jobs from which there is no obvious escape, they are harassed by a petty-minded headmaster (Merrison), whose only concern is bolstering the reputation of the school by getting as many boys as possible into Oxford and Cambridge.
As they realise, the boys “know everything”, be it the sexual peccadillos of the teachers (for instance, Hector’s habit of stroking the boys’ knees) or their frustration at their career prospects, Dayton and company hone in intuitively on every weakness. The boys may be precocious but they are also more tolerant than the adults; they certainly don’t judge Hector in the way that the headmaster does.
On one level, it is also a daring and potentially even controversial feature, portraying Hector - a teacher who doesn't conceal his attraction to the pupils in his charge - in a sympathetic light, and his attempts to lure the boys onto the back of his motorbike are shown as comic rather than sinister. The storytelling could have taken on a seedier, sadder undertow with another actor in the role. As it is, Griffiths dominates the film, and those who remember him with fondness as Uncle Monty in Withnail & I will find even more to cherish here. His performance utterly galvanises what might otherwise have seemed an overly cautious adaptation.
One of the strengths of British cinema has always been its character actors. It is heartening to find a film in which a stock type - the eccentric, blustering teacher - isn’t just treated as comic relief but is given real emotional depth.
Of the support, Frances De La Tour delivers a touching characterisation of Mrs Lintott, the ever-exasperated history teacher, while Clive Merrison is enjoyable as the headmaster.
Such positives help overcome some of the film’s technical shortcomings. The recreation of northern England in the early 1980s is dour, drab and a little clumsy, while the continual use of pop music from the era risks grating. Certain devices – like the postscript in which we learn what subsequently became of the protagonists - can’t but feel stilted on screen.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
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Sonic Youth
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"Why is no one predicting The History Boys?"
The History Boys
By LESLIE FELPERIN
Variety
"The History Boys" may please fans of the original legit production and the stragglers who didn't catch it in Gotham or London's West End. However, auds coming cold to this largely faithful adaptation of Alan Bennett's clever but contrived classroom comedy won't be so wowed, given pic's irrevocably stagy feel. Nicholas Hytner's flat-footed direction doesn't help, nor do pic's younger cast members' over-rehearsed perfs, although the seasoned thesps shine. Hard-marketing push and Bennett's name should reap interest from Blighty's chattering classes when it opens in the U.K. on Oct. 13, but "History" may struggle to push beyond sophisticated urban centers upon Stateside release Nov. 22.
Given legit version's success, pic's producers have chosen not to spike the feed of a winning horse. Helmer of the acclaimed "The Madness of King George" (another Bennett script) and three less acclaimed pics (including "The Object of My Affection"), Hytner launched the play at the National Theatre, and remained on board as producer-helmer there, shooting with the original cast during the break between the London and Tony-winning New York theatrical runs.
Although two real high schools (or "grammar schools," in Brit parlance) were used to rep one location, the action has not been opened up very much beyond the stage production's confines. Meanwhile, Bennett's screen adaptation adds only a few minor characters to the mix.
Set -- like a number of other recent British youth-centered movies (such as "This Is England," "Starter for Ten") -- in the early or mid-'80s, pic revolves around various staff and a selection of elite sixth-year (i.e. final-year) students at Cutler's Grammar School, located in Sheffield, a town in the northern county of Yorkshire.
Eight boys -- gay and Jewish Posner (Samuel Barnett), class stud Dakin (Dominic Cooper), portly clown Timms (James Corden), Christian Scripps (Jamie Parker), dim but sporty Rudge (Russell Tovey), badge-wearing Lockwood (Andrew Knott), and quite frankly barely sketched ethnic minorities Crowther (Samuel Anderson) and Akthar (Sacha Dhawan) -- have been chosen for special tutoring in history to help them pass the difficult entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge.
Cutler's officious headmaster (in other words, a high school principal, played by Clive Merrison), channeling the Zeitgeist of the number-crunching Thatcher era, is fixated on getting as many boys accepted as possible. To this end, he hires young Oxford history graduate Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) to teach the boys new techniques that will grab the examiners' attention.
Irwin's methods -- relativist, goal- rather than truth-oriented -- contrast with those of general studies teacher Hector (Richard Griffiths), who favors memorizing literary quotes. Irwin also aims to widen the students' cultural spheres with the poetry of A.E. Housman as well as show tunes and dialogue from Bette Davis movies, none of it terribly relevant to history but fun to riff on in his unstructured classes.
Furtively gay despite the fact that he has a "somewhat unexpected wife," in the words of tart-tongued history teacher Dorothy Lintott (scene-stealer Frances de la Tour), Hector likes to grope the boys' crotches when he gives them rides on his motorcycle, a habit the students' endure. Nevertheless, his wandering hands get him into trouble eventually, creating some third-act drama that seems more pallid on screen than it did onstage.
Indeed, blow-up to the bigscreen makes the material's fault lines look more chasm-like. For instance, Bennett's glittery dialogue may encrust the material with jewel-bright, quotable lines, but it sounds just plain phony in the mouths of the younger characters.
Plus, the younger actors are so used to inhabiting their roles that all the spontaneity has been squeezed out, although a couple (Barnett, Parker) get better results. The more cinematically experienced Griffiths and de la Tour show how it should be done, and cook up their big set piece monologues to perfection.
However, in the end, they nearly all sound like Alan Bennett characters -- and ones who would be more comfortable in the 1950s than the 1980s -- rather than real people. Essentially, they're vehicles to air competing ideas about education, homoerotic desire, and how history is written. All interesting stuff, but it never quite gels as a drama.
Hytner fails to find rhythms that would give the material a proper shape, and when in doubt gets lenser Andrew Dunn to prowl up and down the school corridors as the thesps make frantic entrances and exits.
Tech credits are serviceable but lacking in flair. Pop tunes by the likes of The Clash, The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen, the stuff real teenagers were listening to in 1983, are unconvincingly deployed to add period flavor, and seem to counteract the incongruity of youngsters in the plot who like to sing Rogers and Hart's "Bewitched" and Edith Piaf's "L'Accordeoniste."
The History Boys
By LESLIE FELPERIN
Variety
"The History Boys" may please fans of the original legit production and the stragglers who didn't catch it in Gotham or London's West End. However, auds coming cold to this largely faithful adaptation of Alan Bennett's clever but contrived classroom comedy won't be so wowed, given pic's irrevocably stagy feel. Nicholas Hytner's flat-footed direction doesn't help, nor do pic's younger cast members' over-rehearsed perfs, although the seasoned thesps shine. Hard-marketing push and Bennett's name should reap interest from Blighty's chattering classes when it opens in the U.K. on Oct. 13, but "History" may struggle to push beyond sophisticated urban centers upon Stateside release Nov. 22.
Given legit version's success, pic's producers have chosen not to spike the feed of a winning horse. Helmer of the acclaimed "The Madness of King George" (another Bennett script) and three less acclaimed pics (including "The Object of My Affection"), Hytner launched the play at the National Theatre, and remained on board as producer-helmer there, shooting with the original cast during the break between the London and Tony-winning New York theatrical runs.
Although two real high schools (or "grammar schools," in Brit parlance) were used to rep one location, the action has not been opened up very much beyond the stage production's confines. Meanwhile, Bennett's screen adaptation adds only a few minor characters to the mix.
Set -- like a number of other recent British youth-centered movies (such as "This Is England," "Starter for Ten") -- in the early or mid-'80s, pic revolves around various staff and a selection of elite sixth-year (i.e. final-year) students at Cutler's Grammar School, located in Sheffield, a town in the northern county of Yorkshire.
Eight boys -- gay and Jewish Posner (Samuel Barnett), class stud Dakin (Dominic Cooper), portly clown Timms (James Corden), Christian Scripps (Jamie Parker), dim but sporty Rudge (Russell Tovey), badge-wearing Lockwood (Andrew Knott), and quite frankly barely sketched ethnic minorities Crowther (Samuel Anderson) and Akthar (Sacha Dhawan) -- have been chosen for special tutoring in history to help them pass the difficult entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge.
Cutler's officious headmaster (in other words, a high school principal, played by Clive Merrison), channeling the Zeitgeist of the number-crunching Thatcher era, is fixated on getting as many boys accepted as possible. To this end, he hires young Oxford history graduate Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) to teach the boys new techniques that will grab the examiners' attention.
Irwin's methods -- relativist, goal- rather than truth-oriented -- contrast with those of general studies teacher Hector (Richard Griffiths), who favors memorizing literary quotes. Irwin also aims to widen the students' cultural spheres with the poetry of A.E. Housman as well as show tunes and dialogue from Bette Davis movies, none of it terribly relevant to history but fun to riff on in his unstructured classes.
Furtively gay despite the fact that he has a "somewhat unexpected wife," in the words of tart-tongued history teacher Dorothy Lintott (scene-stealer Frances de la Tour), Hector likes to grope the boys' crotches when he gives them rides on his motorcycle, a habit the students' endure. Nevertheless, his wandering hands get him into trouble eventually, creating some third-act drama that seems more pallid on screen than it did onstage.
Indeed, blow-up to the bigscreen makes the material's fault lines look more chasm-like. For instance, Bennett's glittery dialogue may encrust the material with jewel-bright, quotable lines, but it sounds just plain phony in the mouths of the younger characters.
Plus, the younger actors are so used to inhabiting their roles that all the spontaneity has been squeezed out, although a couple (Barnett, Parker) get better results. The more cinematically experienced Griffiths and de la Tour show how it should be done, and cook up their big set piece monologues to perfection.
However, in the end, they nearly all sound like Alan Bennett characters -- and ones who would be more comfortable in the 1950s than the 1980s -- rather than real people. Essentially, they're vehicles to air competing ideas about education, homoerotic desire, and how history is written. All interesting stuff, but it never quite gels as a drama.
Hytner fails to find rhythms that would give the material a proper shape, and when in doubt gets lenser Andrew Dunn to prowl up and down the school corridors as the thesps make frantic entrances and exits.
Tech credits are serviceable but lacking in flair. Pop tunes by the likes of The Clash, The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen, the stuff real teenagers were listening to in 1983, are unconvincingly deployed to add period flavor, and seem to counteract the incongruity of youngsters in the plot who like to sing Rogers and Hart's "Bewitched" and Edith Piaf's "L'Accordeoniste."
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler