Making History Enjoyable! (The History Boys (DVD))

Member Name: IainWear

Product:	The History Boys (DVD)
Date:	13/05/08 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An intelligently crafted film

Disadvantages: Extras not worth watching repeatedly

When I sat down over Christmas 2007 to watch a BBC showing of "The History Boys", I did so with no real expectations. I was aware it was written by Alan Bennett, who was someone I was aware of, but whose work had largely passed me by. I also knew that it had started life as a highly successful play, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. I thought it would make for acceptable enough background noise as I read my book, never thinking that not only would the book be forgotten that night, but that the DVD would soon go straight onto my Amazon Wishlist and soon become part of my collection.

In 1980s Sheffield, eight students at Cutler's Grammar School have gained the best A-Level results the school has ever seen. Keen to go to either Oxford or Cambridge Universities, they return for an extra term to study for the entrance exams. Concerned that the education they are receiving from their previous teachers Mr Hector and Mrs Lintott will educate them in subjects but not in getting through, the headmaster hires Mr Irwin to give them what he calls the necessary "polish". Mrs Lintott is to teach history, Mr Hector general studies and Mr Irwin is to teach them the best way to pass the entrance exams and get the places they all seek; some more enthusiastically than others.

We get to follow the boys during this last term and the final examination and interview process which would see them accepted or otherwise to their chosen university. Although we get to see a little bit of their home lives, generally the focus is within the classroom and the majority of the film takes place in the school. The interaction between the students and the known and well loved, if not entirely respected, teachers is covered in depth and you get to see the range of knowledge and intelligence of the students as well as the general cheekiness and insubordination you get with the group of late teenage boys.

This was the major joy of the film for me. The boys are meant to be the smartest that the school has to offer, so the conversations they have on history and various other topics is generally highly intelligent and they certainly make points I wouldn't have thought of when I was studying history. What was even more remarkable about this was that I hated history when I was at school, yet I still enjoyed the cut and thrust of the discussions on the subject. The banter with the teachers was quite good as well, reminding me of my time at school where you could still have a relatively friendly relationship with some of the teachers without the fear of being expelled and the teachers more or less free of the threat of physical violence that seems to exist in today's schools. Given how long ago I was in school, I was glad that this film was set in a 1980s Grammar School, which is also the type of school I attended, rather than a more modern educational environment.

What helped with the feel of the film was that the cast was taken wholesale from the stage version of "The History Boys", so at the time the film was made, they had been performing these roles together for quite some time. This meant that you really believed that all the boys were close friends and they had built up their relationships with the teachers and each other over several years at school together. The one area where this did seem to fall down slightly was in Stephen Campbell Moore's role as Irwin, as there seemed to be a bit more familiarity than would be expected with a new young teacher and as the supposed newcomer to the school, he didn't seem to be treated as differently as that role would require.

The performances were generally pretty good, although the amount of screen time every student got depended on the script. Whilst no-one let the side down, so to speak, some of them were dreadfully underused at times. Russell Tovey seemed to stand out as Rudge, although this could be because his character was a lot more reticent and less the centre of attention than all the others and so he stood out more. Samuel Barnett as Posner was also above some of the others, looking like he was really struggling with falling in unrequited love with one of his classmates. Dominic Cooper as Dakin was excellent as the object of that desire, playing the role of someone for whom everything comes easily, particularly the world of sex, as if it was actually him and not a part he was playing. My favourite character was Jamie Parker as Scripps, as he had a wonderfully dry sense of humour and got the most sardonic lines, if not always the funniest ones. Strangely enough, the character I thought was a bit too much of a show off for my tastes was Timms, played by James Corden, who has had the most success of all eight of the boys, co-starring and co-writing the BBC comedy "Gavin and Stacey".

Whilst the performances were all effective for the time they were on screen, it was this time that varied immensely. I believe that part of the problem was that the play itself had a running time of around 3 hours, but the film version was set at slightly under 2 hours, which has meant that a lot of material has been lost and some scenes do show the scars where it was removed. The scene with Penelope Wilton as the art teacher is largely pointless and seems to have made it into the film by dint of having a couple of decent lines in it, but serves no real purpose. It also meant that a brief moment of racial tension between Crowther and Akhtar was left hanging and whilst Rudge was apparently a decent sportsman, we saw nothing of this and very little of the boys' varied home lives. I do feel it could have been interesting to have explored these aspects a little more, rather than to concentrate on the sexual orientation sub plot which was so all pervasive that it threatened to be more a film about the boys' sexual preferences, rather than their struggle to achieve entry into our more famous universities. I also thought that the ending was a little trite and formulaic, but it was done well enough that this didn't matter too much.

What was left was generally very good, however. The interaction between the cast members was perfect and whilst some of them seem to fade into the background, to the extent that I had to look up Crowther's name to find out what it was, nobody stood out for putting in a poor performance. The direction of the film seemed to be pretty much spot on as well, although the director Nicholas Hytner was the same person who directed the stage play with the same cast which, as he admits in his DVD commentary, made it easier as the cast generally knew what they were doing and how best to stand to react to any given situation and to relate to each other.

Possibly the best part of the film was the soundtrack, which mixes the period of the film with the period of some of their teachings perfectly. The 1980s are represented by the greats of the time; the Cure, the Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order all being featured. But in a nod to the age of their subject matter, there are pre-war songs from the likes of Gracie Fields and a superb version of "Bewitched", sung by Samuel Barnett as Posner, which underlined the gay love story between him and Dakin wonderfully. The whole sub-plot might have had too much screen time at the expense of other potentially interesting storylines within the film, but it was a wonderfully told and acted love story.

It's useful that the film is such a success, as the DVD extras are best described as a little lacking, especially by comparison with the quality of the film. The "History Boys Around the World: Tour Diaries" is a 14 minute tour documentary following the cast as they take the stage show on a world tour. Whilst it's a generally light hearted look showing how well they all get on off stage, there are also some moments where things are getting to them. Unfortunately, there is no idea of any time frames, so it's difficult to judge how trying things are and it just seems like a whistle stop look at what they were doing and doesn't offer much, although it was enough of a laugh in a couple of parts to be worth having a look at the once.

The same is true of "Pass It On: The History Boys on Screen", which is a 12 minute look at how the film made the transition from stage to screen. Generally this is a few on set shots and interviews with everyone talking about how good the experience was. There are a couple of brief mentions about the technical differences between the two mediums, but this happens rarely and there's more of this in the DVD commentary, which barely makes this worth watching.

The commentary wasn't too bad, being the writer Alan Bennett and the director Nicholas Hytner. As with everyone else, the two of them have been involved with the story right from the start and can offer a lot of information. The contrast between the two men helps keep things interesting, as Bennett has an almost monotonous Northern accented voice and talks quite often about how specific people influenced the writing and how he received letters about some of the writing. Nicholas Hytner has a more varied tone and talks more enthusiastically about more general ideas; setting the scenes and the psychology behind some of it. There are some light hearted moments and a couple of decent anecdotes, but it does perhaps get a little too technical at parts, which could be useful for a film studies student, but not so much for the casual fan that I am. As with the "On Tour" feature, it was interesting to watch the once and it does cover some of the information from the "Pass It On" feature to render that largely pointless.

If you like your films intelligent and amusing, this could well be the kind of film for you. It is very much a dour Northern version of "Dead Poet's Society", with some flashes of humour coming through although not as much and with the teachers having an influence on the students which has more to do with the subjects than with life in general, although these lessons all make it through. If you ever enjoyed "Dead Poet's Society" as I did, then I suspect you may also enjoy "The History Boys", as I did. For prices as little as £2.95 from the Amazon Marketplace, this is a film not to be missed if you like something more intelligent than your average thriller movie. Given that the extras aren't really worth watching more than the once, now it's been shown on the BBC, it will almost certainly be shown again and it's certainly one not to be missed for free and whilst I've watched my version of the DVD enough times for it to have been worth the money I paid for it, if you're not sure you'll end up loving the film as much as I did, then waiting for the repeat would be the suggested option.

Summary: "Dead Poet's Society" comes to 1980s Yorkshire