Phenomenally bad timing

It's 3:44 and I have to wake up at 6 and I still can't get to sleep. Spoiler alert, I guess.

I suppose it's as good a time as any to talk about a movie I watched today, The History Boys. For those who don't know about it, a little background: it was originally a play written by Alan Bennett (who wrote The Madness of George III, whose title was changed in America to The Madness of King George because producers were afraid people would think it was a sequel) that apparently was extremely popular, so they made a movie out of it with all the original cast. Don't think this is some Rent-level fiasco, however--for starters, it's not a musical, and it's also extremely thoughtful and well-acted.

The story centers around an English boarding school where eight pupils are in their last semester (or whatever they call it in England) before college. All of them have gotten high enough marks to possibly get into Oxford or Cambridge, so there is a lot of pressure on them. The students have two teachers with divergent points of view: one, named Hector, likes to teach knowledge for knowledge's sake and makes many long-winded speeches on the power of literature; the other, a comparatively young teacher named Irwin, is far more pragmatic and lectures the students on how they can do well on their exams, which is not by obtaining knowledge but by finding a useful angle no one has thought of before, whether or not they actually believe in it (there is also another teacher, Mrs. Lintott, who is sort of the lukewarm water between them). The movie basically revolves around these eight extremely bright students struggling with whether or not the pursuit of knowledge will have any useful applications in their adult life.

Not much in the way of plot, but boy is there some good dialogue. I especially liked the way
there are no clear villains in this movie: the teachers have radically different teaching styles, but they are all treated sympathetically, and they all have huge character flaws. It is revealed, at some point, that Hector is a closet homosexual who likes to take his students home on his motorcycle in order to grope them in a sexual fashion. This may seem bizarre, but his character is never demonized, and it comes to make sense in a lot of ways: he seems to be sort of romantic poet out of time, and those romantic poets were certainly inclined towards sudden bursts of passion towards younger men (as Hector tries to defend himself, he claims that, "the transmission of information itself is an erotic act"). Irwin, it is revealed, is definitely someone who loves information for the sake of learning, but we learn that part of his drive to make the boys succeed is the fact that he didn't make it into Oxford or Cambridge himself. The kids themselves have a lot of problems too. One of them is gay and in love with another student (who happens to be straight and in a relationship with the school's secretary), one of them is an athlete with mediocre grades who nevertheless has family connections, one is going to go into the army.

The relationships between the students and their teachers is beautifully played out and made me wish I could have those sorts of relationships with my professors (except for the groping part...well, maybe not for some of them). It's been so long since I've seen a movie where people talk intelligently about literature, but they actually do, about Auden and Thomas Hardy and some other things I don't remember now. Hector, played by Richard Griffith, is a particularly good character and probably the heart of the whole movie. I think he is supposed to be based in appearance and demeanor on Harold Bloom, although there are some significant differences--he is an advocate for judging work on aesthetic values alone, but he is also extremely goofy and uses a lot of colloquialisms. If someone could tell me if this man is indeed based on Bloom, I would like to know.

This movie is highly recommended. It makes Dead Poets Society look even more like a piece of shit then it did before. They have actual conversations about poetry that make sense and make you think. Haven't seen that in a while.