No Girls Allowed (The History Boys (DVD))

Member Name: venceremos

Product:	The History Boys (DVD)
Date:	27/07/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Richard Griffiths playing his part well

Disadvantages: Everything Else

Did anyone ever tell you that your schooldays would be the happiest days of your life? Anyone who still continues to subscribe to such nonsense will love this veritable tuck shop full of golden reminiscenses, of sixth form chumminess, matey teachers and lessons that involve no work at all.

The premise is of a group of eight students at the fictional Cutlers boys' grammar school in Yorkshire who have returned for an extra term of tuition designed to get them through the Oxbridge entrance examinations. This is the brainchild of ambitious headmaster Felix (Clive Merrison) who hires Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), a young contract teacher, to assist Mr Hector (Richard Griffiths) and Mrs Lintott (Frances de la Tour) in their chosen subject of history.

Perhaps it's because I never went to a Great University that I don't recognise the lessons as depicted in this film, as the boys are generally shown prancing and singing around a piano, or off on a day trip round a castle, or acting out scenes from films, rather than the reality of the hot afternoon tedium staring out the window wondering if the lesson would ever end.

Irwin's main lesson to the boys is that to achieve the "extra push" so desired of their headmaster, they should take a controversial approach to their rendering of history. Basically, any unconventional or even midly offensive view of it can be expressed of it as long as the facts to justify that view can be used to back it up. As a result, the naive Oxbridge dons will think that such essays will stand out over and above their competitors, and that therefore their writers are more thoroughly deserving of the highest places in academia.

Harmless enough in itself, no doubt. The problem for me came in the ambiguous attitude writer Alan Bennet seems to want me to have towards Mr Hector, whose apparently kind offers to give boys a lift home on his motorbike masks a more sinister purpose of him touching them up when he does so. The boys, of whose parents we see next to nothing, seem to be in on the little secret, make a joke of it among themselves and are astonished to discover their beloved teacher is being forced to resign when a complaint is made about it.

It seems Irwin too has inclinations towards one of the boys, namely Dakin (Dominic Cooper) who, despite dating the headmaster's secretary, invites his teacher to give him a blowjob as a thank you for his successful examination results.

That's as far as I'll take the plot. Basically, Bennett's ambivalence towards what is essentially paedophilia distorts completely any point he was trying to make about the value of education. For it to be linked with homosexuality as well must dismay the homosexual community who have been slurred with insinuations of this sort since time immemorial. We're asked to sympathise here with a teacher who abuses his position to touch up young boys safeguarded to his trust. As someone who's managed to survive a Christian Brother education, Bennett's wildly missed the mark with me. And you - would you have any sympathy with such a character if he was wearing a cassock? I thought not, and neither should you have any for a teacher who doesn't wear one either.

Bennet's view of education may be controversial, but he doesn't have the facts to back it up. It's not just an alternative viewpoint, it's just plain wrong. And you don't need to be an Oxbridge scholar to see that.

Summary: Could do better