It's a strange sign of the times that three of cinema's best, most committed teachers can currently be seen smoking crack in a bathroom (Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson), lustily squeezing a teenaged student's thigh (Richard Griffiths in History Boys), and seriously contemplating oral sex with a prize pupil (Stephen Campbell Moore in History Boys). If it weren't for pearls-sporting Hilary Swank's pure-hearted Pollyanna-in-the-hood turn in the upcoming inspirational-teacher drama Freedom Writers, audiences could be forgiven for mistaking schools for Gomorrah.
Set to a sprightly assortment of new wave hits, Nicholas Hytner's adaptation of Alan Bennett's stage smash centers on a class of ferociously verbal bright young things torn between the antithetical educational approaches of daffy, impractical idealist Griffiths and hard-nosed pragmatist Moore. Moore aims to pave the way to Oxford by getting his pupils to write superficially clever, contrarian essays about how Hitler and Stalin got a bad rap while Griffiths tries to imbue his students with a keen appreciation of the poetry and beauty of learning.
In The History Boys, the classroom becomes a highly theatrical stage for verbal one-upmanship, intellectual combat, and sublimated desire, not to mention impromptu performances of classic movie scenes and the occasional song. In one of the film's funniest, most poignant scenes, a delicate young, gay Jewish student sings "Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered" to a classmate in a high, pure voice full of lust and melancholy, if not experience. Rufus Wainwright reprises the song over the end credits in an effortlessly world-weary version that eloquently captures the desperate yearning at the core of both the play and film. Like "Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered," History Boys boasts a dazzling verbal cleverness—the gleeful rat-a-tat of snappy banter expertly executed—that doesn't keep it from also being deeply, exquisitely sad. It might ultimately be a showtunes-loving Mr. Holland's Opus for the NPR set—The History Boys comes about its heartbreak honestly.