Scarcely ever, we glorify in stage-to-screen adaptations from the likes of CHICAGO to the SOUND OF MUSIC and to the brilliantly moving BILLY ELLIOT. Yet they’re all musicals. All we ever wonder is how a non-musical play would suffer the grimy words of critics when it is brought to screen, whether it’s all talk-the-talk nonsense or an inspired material. THE HISTORY BOYS is a fantastic apparatus to study with, with our lenses zooming, eager to find whether there’s only shtick or some real substance. It tackles materials infinitely delicate even way back in the 80s and even today, and while it’s satisfactorily executed, the transformation from stage to screen seemed to need more of a bounce.


It’s not an all-too fantastic film but it exult fantastic performances all throughout. This group of eight students in an all-boys English public school strives to sit in properly in the Oxbridge exams, as they achieve their A-levels results. Out of the eight clever studs, Samuel Bennett as the clever but vulnerable and confused Posner, and the easy-going and opinionated Dakin played by Dominic Cooper, stands out clearly as good performances. The stage and movie veteran Richard Griffiths plays the sad-sack openly homosexual teacher, who gropes for students during his motorcycle rides, seemed a bit awkward to watch – but necessarily a performance to watch since good actors do have impact on their roles. But it’s Frances De La Tour’s Dorothy Lintott who excels as the feminist teacher and blames “history as a result of masculine ineptitude”, she’s just so excellent in this film. Stephen Campbell Moore also delivers well as the new teacher Irwin, who believes in the power of learning and that sitting in the Oxbridge exam is not just a responsibility but an inherent fact of life. The Headmaster, played Clive Merrison, was played out over-the-top that it’s hard to believe his persona.


THE HISTORY BOYS could sometimes be a difficult film to sit through. The main blame would have to be the material, as how it studies the 80s issues within the all-boys institution. It is a bit creepy indeed to realise when one is confined in an all-boys school since there’s not much space to interact with the opposite sex, just like what happened to some of these boys in the film: Posner suffers in his own confusion as he falls in love with Dakin, his own best friend. It is really scary, even teachers like Hector (Richard Griffiths) seemed to have been influenced by the environment. Yet however, it studies the differences of class, the indulgence of humour and the adolescent life.


Some were calling this “the English DEAD POETS SOCIETY”. Sorry but I don’t agree with this. It’s thematic, this film, as it brings the images of the 80s of the British society but merely reduces the whole plot into self-indulgence. It doesn’t necessarily echo the whole society in general. It is intelligent, witty and clever in its disposition, as these students debate about poetry and even the Holocaust, but it’s all wasted in an uncinematic delivery. Nicholas Hytner provides some effort but I think it’s the material that doesn’t serve its own purpose and rather became fleetingly forgettable.




RATING: B-