TheHistoryBoys(15): A film about early 80s grammar school boys preparing for Oxbridge entrance exams ought to have limited mass appeal. Even when the film is based on a play by Alan Bennett, and has come to the big screen via rave reviews on Broadway, it still doesn't sound particularly mainstream. But The History Boys is a bit special. This is a film where the dialogue is the star - simultaneously erudite, comic, touching, well-observed, literary and insightful. And the cast of teachers and sixth formers, all of whom have been with the play since I saw it at the NationalTheatre two years ago, sparkle just as much as the script. So long as you're expecting something theatrical rather than a series of car chases, you'll enjoy the film.
I was an early 80s grammar school boy preparing for Oxbridge entrance, so the film had a particular resonance for me. I remember the extra lessons, and cramming for the exam, and going for interview beneath a dreaming spire up some creaking wooden staircase. I didn't recognise the forced intellectual conversation between the boys in the film - my classmates were always more likely to be discussing Not The Nine O'Clock News than Wittgenstein. But I did recognise the library, and the playground, and even the green and black tie all the boys were wearing. Because, much to my surprise and delight, many of the scenes in the film were shot at my early 80s grammar school. What are the chances?
In my first year at secondary school I was assigned to a formroom on the top floor of the squat modern English block. My classmates and I had the room at the end of the top corridor overlooking the playing field. Here they'd throw pencil cases (often mine) out of the window onto the top of the dining hall roof, and lock other members of the class (often me) out on the fire escape. This was also the room where our form teacher taught us English. She read us bits of Shakespeare, and got us acting our hearts out, and tried (sometimes in vain) to get me to write something "a bit more serious". And this was also the very same room in which the History Boys were taught history. What are the chances?
So if you go to see this film, and I hope you do, keep an eye out for the back story of my life. When you see the boys studying in the library, that was where I used to do my homework. When you see the boys striding purposefully across the playground, that was where I used to dodge between flying footballs. When you see the boys standing outside the school gates, that was where the ice cream van used to park at lunchtime to sell us 6p cornets. And when you see the boys in a plain white classroom discussing Stalin, practising their interview technique and seducing their embarrassed history teacher, that was my extremely ordinary formroom. Oh, and when you see the class heartthrob standing in a college quad after his successful interview, that was my Oxbridge college. But that's another story.
