"What do I think of history? It's just one &*%£ing thing after another."

I spent last night watching The History Boys, a smart, bittersweet not-quite-comedy from the pen of Alan Bennett. It's a bit of a strange creature - like his "Madness of King George", it's uprooted from a stage play, but still keeps a lot of the conceits of the stage version, particularly with the ending, and never really opens the action up. It doesn't gain a lot from being made into a movie, but on the other hand, neither does it lose much. The fact that the cast and even director reprised their roles from The National Theatre version helps keep the polish.

The story concerns a group of boys in Sheffield in the 1980s, who are being coached for Oxbridge entrance exams. Richard Griffiths is the inspiring English teacher 'Hector', who clashes with young supply teacher Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) who is interested only in technique and results instead of passion. All quite traditional, but there's a disconcerting undertone to the story. There's disconcerting moments of sexual longing between students and teachers - Hector is inspiring, humorous, wonderfully human, but has a rather unfortunate habit of "laying on hands" when giving his pupils rides home on his motorcycle. Something that both students and Hector understand will never go any further, but the undercurrent of dark longing and sexual desire between the boys and their teacher(s) doesn't always make for entirely comfortable viewing.

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