Lewes Cinema - The History Boys

Alan Bennett’s enormously successful play The History Boys has been transformed, with original cast and director intact, into a pretty successful film. The action takes place in a Sheffield Grammar school in 1983, and focuses on the preparation of a group of smart male students to take the now defunct Oxbridge exam. There is a conceit that they are ordinary boys struggling against the traditional dominance of public schools in accessing Oxford and Cambridge. A bit dubious, this, as none of the boys seem particularly underprivileged. And there is little in the film that places it in the Sheffield of the early ‘80s that produced the Human League. Not a Phil Oakey hairstyle in sight. The History Boys may be more accurately located in Bennett’s own experience at a Northern Grammar school in the 1950s.

The central tension in the film is between the inspirational but eccentric teaching of poetry and culture (with a bit of groping), by the character Hector, played brilliantly by Richard Griffiths, and the pragmatic, results-focussed teaching of the young Irwin (an excellent Stephen Campbell Moore). But the film is really about longing. Most of it is sexual, submerged, and frustrated around the desire of men/boys for each other. The marvellous Frances de la Tour is the only significant female presence. As a film, it is quite static, and indeed very much like watching a play, and this makes the last section a bit unconvincing. But for all that, it is enjoyable, well-scripted and well-played. EC