The History Boys (2006)

What makes it different from others?

Truly Dreadful Film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

In my opinion various characters in the movie can teach us various things. As a whole the history boys show us that with self belief and determination you can indeed persevere and achieve your goals. Dakin personally displays our an adolescents feelings are so pure yet so vulnerable, he is immediately drawn in by Irwin and this ends up causing him to question his sexuality. We as educators need to remember that this is the stage where affection for the opposite / same sex starts to develop and should provide guidance and not judgement. Hector also falls in to this topic as he almost corrupts the boys judgement due to him bribing them with a lift home, but you end up seeing that this was a innocent act of loneliness on his part. Every character causes you to feel some kind of emotion for them and I really enjoyed that aspect of the movie.

Many people seem to condemn this movie on a value basis as homophilic propaganda. I personally am a religious conservative opposing gay marriage, but nevertheless recognize this as a quality film.What I most enjoyed in this movie were the multiple intellectual discussions on the philosophy of history, i.e. what "history" in its essence is. Having done academic work with the history of ideas many questions and different types of approach were familiar to me from the Academy. Some people find the intellectual banter of the boys, laced with absurd situation humor, untenable, but I can personally testify, that a lot of wordplay like this takes place at academic circles when there are enough people immersed in certain discipline around. It is rare to find this at a regular high school, because usually one class carries only a couple of persons destined to humanistic studies on university level. But the setting of the film was in my view just to explain, what might happen, when such rare occurrence takes place among youngsters.The second point, which many viewers condemned as unrealistic was the strong sexual tone of the film. Now I do agree, that the film promotes a homosexualist agenda, but does that make the portrayal unrealistic? Yongsters coming at age are actually very much brimming with their sexuality, and it is not a rare thing they come up with direct proposals to their teachers. Been there, had the wisdom to decline, but the scenes between Dakin and Irwin are something that in my opinion is fairly common at least in heterosexual relations, as girls are exploring the limits of the power of their sexuality on an authority figure. Now what I do find justifiable in the criticism of the film is, whether the same dynamic applies to homosexual youth, as in their case the recognition and expression of one's orientation might be a much more difficult progress. In this I am no expert to comment, but at least in a heterosexual setting the same dynamic is realistic and in my opinion it is a strength of the film as a piece of art to explore this very dynamic, in spite the society might wish to pretend it does not exist. Is it not a marker of quality art that it explores issues of human nature which are difficult to touch and would be wished away by many in other forms of public discussion? There is of course also the question whether it is believable, that the two best history teachers of the movie happen to be gay. One can of course see this as an attempt to show homosexualism in an idealized light. However, I do have a few friends who have done graduate studies at Oxford, and in their account the old universities indeed do have a sizable number of eccentric gay persons in their faculty - some of whom are also using their position to get in the pants of the younger scholars. It is contemptible that such things happen, but again I make the point, that it is the task of art to show humanity as it is. In spite of the fact that I find homosexual sex in general and especially adult teachers fondling younger boys quite repulsive, in my opinion as a Christian it is important also to see the redeeming qualities of each person. The movie shows us, that neither Hector nor Irwin have had an easy life: they are no idealized romantic subjects, but have been forced to descend to objectible measures to get even one touch from the objects of their longing, or to repress their sexuality, both condemned to a loveless life. However, especially Hector has come into terms with his situation through art and poetry, an objective quality which we can recognize in him. This recognition is not an approval of his deeds, but a recognition of that persons are more complex than just carriers of sexual identities, which should be a think to keep in mind amid all the cultural wars that tend to make everything either glorified of horrified.

The good things: the acting is top notch, and it's vaguely interestingThe rest of it: I just don't know where to start...The obvious thing is the bizarre celebration of sexual abuse of school children which the film romanticises and tries to pass off as normal and an in-joke amongst teachers and children.Beyond this, the entire thing is unbelievable fabrication of an alternative reality that is some kind of homosexual- liberal-pseudo-intellectual fantasy. No 18 yo boys talk like that anywhere in the world, not even in the 80s. They talk back and forth as if in a Shakespeare play, and spontaneously break in to song and drama routines in the middle of lesson. They also seem to idolise the massively overweight sweaty, lecherous old teacher who molests them on his motorbike, when in reality the boys would ridicule him and try to give him a nervous breakdown. Every relationship in this film is unbelievable: the boys love the old sweaty pervert, but initially seem to hate the new teacher who is nice, talks to them in a relatively normal way, and actually teaches them proper interesting lessons. The teachers seem to have no problem with hanging out with the students, smoking, and hiding from the headteacher, and the boys treat the staff in a similar way, at one point asking his teacher to 'suck him off', and not in a cheeky way, but as a genuine request.The thing that really got to me was that despite these students acting like literature Dons from the 16th century, Bennett has throne in bizarre tokenistic 'these are working class, uneducated boys' moments. First off, these boys already act like Oxbridge graduates, so the idea that they are struggling against their social situation to get in to Oxbridge is preposterous. Secondly, despite being to quote and explain the works of many literary figures off the top of their heads, and have spontaneous complex debates on the fine details of every historical event, we are expected to believe that they've never heard of Nietzsche or Jean Paul Sartre. They also just suddenly act 'dumb working class' for a few seconds when required to labour a point.I can't be bothered to write anymore, but I could go on.

I give this film an Alan Partridge-esque "a mixed bag" rating. Some of it is good some of it not so much. I don't normally watch films but I saw it was an Alan Bennett film (or at least based on his play) and I knew he was some sort of renown playwright so I was expecting something a step up from a McDonalds burger and that's what I got. The downside for me was all the homosexual stuff, if I wanted a film about that I'd watch gay porn, unnecessary I though. The interesting stuff was coaching the boys to take a step up the rotten class system, and some alternative views on history which I can see has upset some here who get their history lessons from Saving Ryan's Privates, but that's good I guess, thought provoking! I had to keep switching over to see if Jake Bugg was on iTunes 2013 yet so I missed bits and pieces. It is perhaps relevant to the extend that the chances of someone like Bugg every going to Oxford lies somewhere between zero and minus infinity!!The film gropes at pupil teacher sex (albeit homosexual)and the consequences which I suppose has some merit. I would not say it was captivating but I would watch it again to see the bits I missed. Obviously with it being a play it is mainly dialogue and it has a fair bit of humour in it, particularly teacher v class banter. Can't really say I felt much empathy with the characters though.It was interesting that the guy with no academic ability got selected because his father once worked at the Oxford, stuck a chord with me as I remember being interviewed at Bristol Uni and being told I was one of the few people who got a particular question on electronics (my course) right. Interesting in that they still rejected me!! Bastards!! I noticed all the other candidate were far posher than me too, I guess I lost points for unbuttoning my collar on a boiling hot day. The other candidates looked like stuck up snooty bank clerks, they were no doubt all given offers despite being unable to answer a question which required some real intelligence rather than coaching. I received no coaching from my 'could not care less' comprehensive obviously.So the unfairness of the whole process is quite interesting, the double standards, the real world aspect. Yea so it is pretty clever overall and pretty honest, you see the stuff which is usually swept under the carpet.I initially gave it a 7 but realised it deserved more hence I gave 8 but finally 10 because it is worth watching and ultimately there are only two film categories total crap or worth watching and it is the latter. Let's face it who watches 7/10ths of a film? First film I have watched in years, I am not a film person really so surprised I am writing a review!!I had expected it to be like the Dead Poets Society but the is no literary romance here (just some gay romance) and there is no great acting except in the sense of making ordinary pupils and staff look ordinary. I felt no emotional attachment to any of the characters, they are not from my working class world, they share non of my values, they are all human shells with nothing of value inside, they are not from my planet.So there it is, my first and maybe my last film review so be gentle with me.As I started off giving what would be Alan Partridge's opinion of the film, I feel for the purpose of balance, it is only fair to give what would be the opinion of his alter ego Paul Calf, which would of course be, "a bag of shite".Interesting perhaps how both Alan and Paul use the 'bag' analogy, neither being tainted by the overly verbose and flowery language used by those with nothing of value to say.I have no doubt Paul would be heading for the nearest bar within ten minutes, and who could blame him?