‘History Boys’ is smart, if lost in translation

  • By Robert Horton / Herald Movie Critic
  • Thursday, December 14, 2006 9:00pm
  • LifeGo-See-Do

Celebrated British writer Alan Bennett has had a long career in movies, TV and stage, stretching all the way back to his stint in the comedy group “Beyond the Fringe,” which also featured Dudley Moore and Peter Cook.

But Bennett’s prestige as a playwright reached a new zenith with “The History Boys,” a smash success on the London and Broadway stages. Maybe that’s why the film of the play remains so faithful to the original: Bennett did the screenplay, stage director Nicholas Hytner does directing duties, and the original cast is intact.

This might set off warning bells that the movie hasn’t been properly translated to film. That’s true. But if this movie never quite gets a life of its own, it nevertheless brings some wonderfully heady ideas (and crisp, smart-mouth dialogue) in its wake.

Bennett was inspired by his own school days, but he has pointedly set the film at a later time, namely the Margaret Thatcher era of the early 1980s. At a prep school in the north of England, a group of eight students study to get into Oxford or Cambridge.

They are devoted to their teacher, Hector (Richard Griffiths), a fussy, dramatic Mr. Chips type who still believes in poetry and its power to change lives. When a student questions poetry’s relevance, Hector insists it provides the antidote for life’s hardships, even at the end: “We’re making your deathbeds here, boys.”

In the push for Oxford, the school has hired a young teacher, Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), who takes a more practical approach to studying for exams. Hector’s romanticism is not for him, as he stresses that “truth” is a flexible concept, and that coming up with a new way of saying things is more important than meaning what you say. The maddening thing is, his system works.

Of the eight boys, we tend to focus most on just a couple: Dakin (Dominic Cooper), the most charismatic, and Posner (Samuel Barnett), who has a crush on Dakin. The others are cleanly sketched, and deliver some moments.

Then there’s Hector’s little secret, which isn’t a secret to his students: Though a married man and obesely unattractive, he occasionally gropes his boys while he gives them rides on his motorcycle.

It never goes further than that, and the boys have a bemused attitude about this unwanted interference. Bennett has a similarly bemused take, which might seem strange at first. He presents Hector as a sympathetic romantic, lost in his beautiful interpretations of poetry and affection for old songs and movies.

Richard Griffiths, the huge, gap-toothed actor familiar from the “Harry Potter” movies and the classic “Withnail &I,” brings this character to full emotional life. He won a Tony earlier this year for his stage performance, and you can see why. (Frances de la Tour is his equal as another teacher.)

Even acknowledging the stage origins of the piece, I have no idea why “The History Boys” looks so bad. Hytner’s flat direction doesn’t kill it, but you’d better be in love with words to give this movie a fighting chance.

“The History Boys” remains faithful to the stage play.

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