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Alan Bennett's The History Boys was such a smash hit at London's National Theatre in 2004, winning three Olivier awards - and subsequently on Broadway, where it won a record six Tonys - that transition to the big screen was, as with Bennett's The Madness Of King George, automatic. (In both cases, director Nicholas Hytner oversaw the transfer.)
Though it's set explicitly in the 1980s, the educational backdrop of The History Boys - grammar schools, Oxbridge entrance, the blind eye turned to a tutor's fondling of his pupils - seems to hark back to the bygone age of Bennett's own experiences in the 1950s. Regardless of the period, it's the story of a mixed group of pupils - one black, one Asian, one fat, one sporty, one Jewish/gay - who must cram for Oxford or Cambridge. Opposing methodologies are personified by teachers Hector (Richard Griffiths) and Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), the former a fan of learning for its own sake, the latter a whiz at giving the exam board what they want.
It's like a Northern Grange Hill for camp high achievers, and, like the best of Bennett, runs on the engine of exquisite dialogue, much of it so smart or pithy it's almost as if every character, young and old, is speaking in the same voice. By definition a very male film, the only females of note are Frances De La Tour's imperious deputy head Mrs Lintott and school secretary Fiona (Georgia Taylor). The clue's in the last word of the title.
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