Die History Boys - Fürs Leben lernen

The English duo of Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett last collaborated on 1994's Oscar and BAFTA winning THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE. This 2006 collaboration abbreviates Bennett's own 2004 Royal National Theatre play into a fast- moving account of how a group of Yorkshire teenagers from a state school pass the now defunct Oxford/Cambridge entrance exam. This is England in 1983. It's the zenith of Thatcherism. It was also the year of the film EDUCATING RITA, in which a working class housewife betters herself through an Open University degree. Things have obviously changed in the country since the Victorian times of Thomas Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE, where university is not a thing for the working class.

But the social, political and cultural milieu of the era is kept in the background (it's much less evocative than THIS IS ENGLAND, made the same year and also set in 1983). This is as much a fantasy of education as DEAD POET'S SOCIETY. These are classes full of the expectational, bright and articulate. Bennett never really finds the authentic voice of the 18-year olds - they speak the words of older, wiser men. But the performances - Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore and Frances De La Tour as the teachers tutoring them in various ways towards university and, amongst other a pre-stardom Domonic Cooper and James Corden as the students - are uniformly excellent. The dialogue is witty in its observations on the education system and the purpose of education. Bennett's own adaptation wisely drops the two flashes forward which opened the play's first and second acts (Campbell Moore's character as a TV historian in the present day).

The title of this film is probably an adaptation of Malcolm Bradbury's well-known university novel, "The History Man", made into an excellent TV series in the early eighties. Like Bradbury's novel, it is set in an educational institution, in this case a boys' grammar school in the Sheffield of the early eighties. It focuses on a group of history students who are preparing to take the Oxbridge entrance exams. (At this period, students who wished to apply to Cambridge or Oxford normally stayed on at school for another term after taking their A-Levels and then took a special exam in December).

Apart from the boys, the two main characters are two of their teachers. Hector, an elderly man approaching retirement, is the general studies teacher whose role is to give the boys some general cultural background. He has a deep love of learning and believes strongly in the value of knowledge for its own sake. He has, however, become something of a figure of fun to the boys, partly because of his portly figure and his occasionally eccentric teaching style, but mostly because he is a homosexual (although trapped in an unhappy marriage), given to fondling his pupils, especially when giving them a lift on his motorcycle.

Irwin is a young history specialist brought in by the school to coach the boys for this examination. Unlike Hector, who has a deep reverence for truth as an absolute value, Irwin takes the Pontius Pilate line, "what is truth?", and encourages the boys to question received ideas about history. Like Hector, he too is homosexual, and becomes involved with Dakin, one of the boys. Dakin, who is bisexual, is also having an affair with Fiona, the headmaster's attractive secretary; another boy, Posner, who is just realising that he is gay, has an unrequited crush on Dakin.

Bennett's play was recently used by A A Gill, the left-wing TV critic of the "Sunday Times", as a stick with which to beat conservative historians. (He was thinking of the likes of Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and David Starkey). He compared their revisionist approach to history to that of Irwin which he saw as intellectually dishonest, mere contrarianism for the sake of stirring up controversy (and publicity). That seemed to me, however, to be a misinterpretation. Bennett was not criticising historians who seek to re-evaluate the past rather than simply repeating traditional received ideas. Irwin may not be interested in truth for its own sake, but his approach to history is advocated less as a method of philosophical inquiry than as an exam-passing technique, his argument being that a deliberately controversial approach is more likely to impress Oxbridge dons jaded from marking too many papers. (In any case, some of Irwin's ideas- such as the claim that the Allies as well as the Germans were to blame for the outbreak of World War One- would not have been particularly controversial among historians in the eighties).

The film has been criticised for its homosexual themes, some reviewers going so far as to attack Bennett for allegedly defending paedophilia, which strikes me as another misconception. The boys in this film would all be aged eighteen or nineteen, and therefore of the age of consent, even for homosexual acts. The issue which Bennett raises is not "Is paedophilia defensible?", but "Are sexual relationships appropriate between teachers and pupils, regardless of age?", and his answer appears to be "no". Hector's penchant for fondling his pupils has, despite his gifts as a teacher, led to his becoming a laughing-stock and diminished his authority among the boys. Bennett certainly concentrates on homosexuality (apart from the Dakin-Fiona affair, there is surprisingly little- for a film about teenage boys- mention of heterosexual relationships), but it must be remembered that he is himself gay and, like most writers, concentrates on those issues which are most important in his own life. The film would doubtless be very different, and possibly more popular with heterosexual audiences, if the scriptwriter had been heterosexual. It would, however, be unfortunate if audiences allowed themselves to be dissuaded from seeing the film.

I felt that Bennett raised some potentially interesting themes which he did not pursue, such as the female teacher's feminist comments about the role of women in history and the discussion about whether the Holocaust is a subject that can be studied by historians like any other, but it seems to me that the film was not so much a film of ideas as a study in personalities and relationships. Richard Griffiths was very good as Hector, bringing out both sides of his personality. On the surface Hector is a larger-than-life, jovial character, ever ready for a laugh with the boys, but beneath that surface he is a sensitive, often unhappy, man. I also liked Stephen Campbell Moore's cynical but also vulnerable Irwin and Clive Merrison's pompous, autocratic headmaster (even if he was a bit of a caricature). The boys mostly emerged as distinct personalities in their own right- the handsome, cocksure Dakin, the shy, tormented Posner, the hearty sportsman Rudge, and so on.

The other thing I liked about the film was that, in spite of some serious themes and a tragic denouement, it is often brilliantly funny. Like a number of other reviewers I was particularly struck by the scene, played all in French without subtitles, where Hector gets the boys to act out a scene in a brothel and then (when the headmaster unexpectedly enters) tries to pretend that they were re-enacting a scene from a wartime hospital! There are also some perceptive one-liners, from Hector Irwin and the boys, such as the paradoxical, but often true, observation that the best way to forget something is to commemorate it. This is a film with much to enjoy, quite apart from the pleasures of nostalgia. (I attended a grammar school very similar to this one in the late seventies before going to Cambridge). 7/10.

So many moments in this film struck a chord with me. As a grammar school student applying for Oxbridge, I have to disagree with the previous reviewer. The worries and pressures, as well as the arrogance, humour (and sheer smart-aleckness) that surround the boys' dialogue perfectly capture the hilarity and torture of adolescence. The dialogue is a little stage-y, but that doesn't seriously tarnish its impact. I think this film expresses the uncertainty and risk involved in life in a way that is both poignant and witty; often both at the same time. Ideas about what education should really be could not be more beautifully expressed than in this picture of young boys with their whole lives stretched out in front of them, and old teachers still unsure of what it's all about. Subtle and brilliant.

The History Boys is a very very challenging film for any audience. One of these reasons is that it is driven by extremely eloquent conversations between younger and elder intellectuals, each conversation delving aggressively deep into the corners of conventional logic and subtexts and fleshing them out in what different characters arguably believe are the most truthful ways. Many characters are quite confident and extremely extroverted and the ones who are not so confident are defensively so. Alan Bennett's remarkably clear analysis of the human condition is intimidating.

The other reason is because the story is one beyond social judgment. Perhaps this is purposeful because being written, produced, directed, and acted by English people, class-consciousness is surely existent among them. But that's what I love so much about this film. The audience, in order to understand and enjoy it, must release themselves from the scrutiny of general culture over many, mostly sexual, aspects of life. The film is not about homosexuality, but homosexual goings-on exist prevalently in the story. It's also treated very nonchalantly, and many straight boys are free of any personal sexual burdens that would inhibit them from partaking. The very talked-about homosexual element of the film exists as the most direct example and also the core of the basis of the story, which is the pressure of society's judgmental and devastatingly interfering nature with many things that, if one were truly understanding, would not judge or interfere with. This extends to greater and more complex idealism in the script, such as the philosophy and meaning of education, the satisfactory or unsatisfactory pursuit and outcome of success, the importance of art and poetry, and the point of studying history.

I believe that The History Boys is an extremely important movie, and the fact that it lasted for a single week at a small theater here in Cincinnati is despicable and glaringly, stupidly contradictory to its message.

"History is just one f-----g thing after another." Rudge in The History Boys

The above quote from the athletic, anti-intellectual Rudge in Alan Bennett's London and Broadway hit, The History Boys, is the antithesis of the high-minded quotes and philosophies spouted by teachers and aspiring "Oxbridge" scholars at a public grammar school in Yorkshire. Yet the quote epitomizes the sub-textual disdain for intellectual snobbery and solipsism that hangs about academic institutions anywhere, anytime.

History can be an accumulation of facts that have power in their reality ("This is Oxford and Cambridge. You don't just need to know it backwards. Facts. Facts. Facts."). Or it can be a set of insights into the human condition whose power derives from the understanding one extracts from them ("All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use."). This film reveals the tension between those poles of learning and the in-between state of wisdom.

It's 1983 in a boys' public grammar in Yorkshire as the gifted "history boys" prepare for their "Oxbridge" exams for entrance to Oxford or Cambridge. The months before the exams will put them in hyper drive as the results-oriented headmaster vies with the portly sensibility teacher, Hector, who believes more in the experience of education than the quantifiable outcomes. Memorized lines from Keats or learning French by acting out a scene in a brothel is his preferred mode.

The latent and sometimes overt homosexuality, not a stranger to boys' school, is handled as just another learning experience for boys and teachers, at least those couple of teachers such a Hector who are known to prefer boys. The sexual orientation is as much figurative for decisions that must be made and the experience that will bring understanding of life's unpredictability, not just historical facts. The acceptance and casualness of the issue stretches credulity, but not as metaphor.

The transition to film from stage is no always smooth: Some scenes are played directly into the camera; others are static, less fluid on screen than under the proscenium arch. But who cares with all that inspired dialogue? If you love to hear English as it was meant to be spoken, albeit highly stylized, and young people grappling with big ideas, see The History Boys.