Synopsis

"The History Boys" begins at a small public boys’ school in industrial Northern England where an unprecedented eight students are about to pursue the ultimate British dream: to gain acceptance into one of England’s two legendary universities. Distracted by sex, sports and the chaos of growing up in the 1980s, the boys are helped, and sometimes hindered, by two teachers who are diametrically different in their methods: the slick Mr Irwin, a recent graduate of Oxford who has been brought in by the schools ambitious Headmaster to whip the boys into exam-ready shape with his aggressive focus on strategy and 'spin', and maverick literature teacher Hector, who thinks himself a fool yet breaks all the rules in trying to help the boys discover their own wisdom. As both teachers vie for the boy's loyalty, minds, and even their hearts, they impart vital lessons and reveal their own human flaws.

What The Critics Say

"Director Nicholas Hytner brings Alan Bennett's London and Broadway smash to the screen with the original stage actors and brings out the frisky best in all of them." Peter Travers ROLLING STONE "Griffiths' brilliantly rumpled academic with recklessly roving hands is matched by the disarming Samuel Barnett as a sad-sack gay student, and the bull's-eye precise Frances de la Tour, a battle-weary standard bearer for feminist history." Jan Stuart NEWSDAY "The movie adaptation has been lifted from the theater with original cast and director Nicholas Hytner intact; the actors interact as cozily as chums on a playing field." Lisa Schwarzbaum ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY "It has a flow and an intimacy that the often awkward theatrical version lacked." Richard Schickel TIME MAGAZINE "The final delight of The History Boys is realizing that these charming young actors... will now graduate to new things." Sean Means SALT LAKE TRIBUNE "A thrillingly smart and immensely enjoyable screen version of Alan Bennett's celebrated play." Joe Morgenstern WALL STREET JOURNAL "There's no one today writing English dialogue as sharp as Bennett's, and hearing it delivered expertly is a pleasure worth sitting through some dodgy montages for." Glenn Kenny PREMIERE MAGAZINE

"Alan Bennett’s very entertaining play, "The History Boys" has been brought to the screen with the original cast intact by director Nicholas Hytner, who first staged it at Britain’s National Theatre. Frances De La Tour is dazzling as a waspish woman teacher, and Stephen Campbell Moore is also very effective as the new teacher, the catalyst in the drama." David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES "I was sad when school let out. The characters are so rich I wanted to spend more time with them." Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone THE MOVIE CHICKS "A bracingly involving school drama that's lively, smart and extremely pointed." Rich Cline SHADOWS ON THE WALL "Full of energy, ideas and fine acting." Eleanor Ringel Gillespie ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION "The History Boys is alive on the screen." David Denby NEW YORKER "Mixing ambition, comedy, poignancy, luck, friendship, confused sexuality and teacher-student friendship and angst, Bennett uses a large ensemble all with a mandatory hang-up or let-down. Griffiths and de la Tourknow how to keep the dramatic focus sharp and reflect the social and political issues that undescore the story." Stan James THE ADVERTISER REVIEW

The Inside Story In May of 2004, Alan Bennett’s provocative new play about the anarchy of adolescence, the purpose of education and the nature of history, “The History Boys,” opened at London’s National Theatre under the direction of Nicholas Hytner. It was an instant sensation. Rife with mischievous wit, teenaged energy and insistent questions about everything from why anyone reads poetry to the nitty-gritty of sexual ethics, the play drew sell-out crowds and garnered numerous prizes. A hugely successful world tour was later followed by a smash hit run on Broadway. Despite its distinctly British setting, the story connected just as strongly with Americans, with The New York Times calling the play "madly enjoyable and enthralling." It went on to sweep the Tony Awards, winning six categories, including Best Play, Best Director, Best Lead Actor and Best Featured Actress. Even before its Broadway success, Hytner and Bennett realized there was a film in the offering. It will surprise many who have seen the film that it took a mere five weeks to shoot in a brief window between the play’s run at the National Theatre and the start of its world tour. "The play was rehearsed in depth when we first staged it and not much more than a year later, we made the film," Hytner explained. "Films can take years and years and years and sometimes, by the time they get made, all passion is spent. But Alan wrote the play quickly, in a flash of inspiration, and it’s a play that we never lost our enthusiasm for. In the process of translating it from the stage to film; of rethinking how to tell the story, re-conceiving it, re-visualizing it; there was never any slackening of momentum." One major reason behind geting the film underway was they knew there would be a very tiny window of opportunity prior to the world tour, and during the English holidays, that would enable them to shoot in an actual school closed for the summer. Another big plus was that they had a ready made cast waiting in the wings. "It doesn’t happen very often that a play is cast perfectly in every respect," says Hytner. "When that does happen, material which is already rich and resonant simply becomes richer. The combination of the parts as written on the page and what is recreated every night by imaginative actors getting right under the skin of what they’re doing keeps it more than alive. There was no way we were going make this film without the cast we’d been working with for the previous twelve months." Once Hytner and Bennett were ready they approached notably iconoclastic indie producers Kevin Loader ("Captain Corelli's Mandolin" & "Enduring Love") and Damian Jones ("Welcome To Sarajevo" & "Millions") who reveled they "were thrilled to be part of the project." Loader summed up their contribution by noting: "What we brought to the party was a knowledge of how to make this film for a small budget and to give Nicholas and Alan the kind of absolute creative freedom that they wanted." So how did Bennett adapt his stage play to a screenplay? "I just cut out bits that I didn’t think were appropriate or which wouldn’t work and Nick cut out more," he said. "I then put in the extra bits I felt we needed to fill out the canvas. I wrote in a few characters simply because you needed to see the headmaster knocking about and you needed to see teachers in the staffroom scenes." "I wrote a brief scene , though she makes it a very good one, in the art department with Penelope Wilton as the art mistress. And I added a religious P.E. instructor played by Adrian Scarborough who’s slightly drawn from somebody who was at school in my time," says Bennett. Hytner recalls making the film meant taking some cinematic risks. "For me it was wonderfully exciting to try and make a film out of very bright people who spark ideas off each other, who riff off each other intellectually, trying to outsmart each other with great wit and joie de vivre but with an underlying seriousness. We tried to reflect that in the way we shot it and in the way we cut it. But we also tried to reflect that by sometimes being as static as you could dare to be in a film." Heading up the cast of "The History Boys" is larger than life actor Richard Griffiths as Hector, the 'General Studies' teacher. "He is a wonderfully strange, mysterious character at heart," is Griffiths assessment of his character. "He’s got the heart of a romantic poet and now he’s got these eight bright boys and he wants to do the best by them that he can. I think he’s somebody who hopes for the best but at the back of it all has an expectation that it will all end in tears." And on Hector's sexuality? "Hector’s sexuality is frozen. He doesn’t actually do anything, however, and the boys have already completed their education and have come back to school for this extra term, so none are under age." Stephen Campbell Moore plays Irwin, a teacher brought into the school by its ambitious Headmaster. How challenging was the role. "It was desperately hard," Moore admitted. "I mean with the actors, as well, because we are all about the same age. I had to rely on the fact that Irwin’s ideas are exciting enough to get the boys interested, even though they are cheeky with him." And the interaction between Irwin and Hector? "On a personal level, Irwin’s irritated by Hector," Moore explained. "He finds him frustrating. I think the last thing that he wants to do is become someone like Hector, a sad, old guy that’s been teaching for years and has wasted his life and gets all of his pleasure from seeing boys learning for the sake of learning. He doesn’t want that disappointment but I think the fact that Irwin increasingly becomes sympathetic towards Hector is a nice development." Playing the role of teacher Mrs Lintott, is Tony Award winner Frances de la Tour. "It’s a lovely part that I believe Alan Bennett wanted me to play right from the start, so it was really, really nice to be thought of," she says. Each of the eight young actors who made a massive splash on Broadway also return to the "The History Boys" to recreate their quirky, colorful, quick-witted adolescent characters on screen. From the sexy, smart and unsinkably confident Dakin to Posner, who opines: "I’m small, I’m Jewish, I’m homosexual and I live in Sheffield. I’m fucked." Different as they each are from one another, what brings the history boys together is the quest to break through, to go beyond their backgrounds and achieve what their parents before them could not. The actors: Samuel Anderson, Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, James Corden, Sacha Dhawan, Andrew Knott, Jamie Parker and Russell Tovey were keen to get the film production started. The flashiest character in the film is Dakin, played by Dominic Cooper. "Dakin is so confident that he seems to be able to get what he wants out of people without offending them," notes Cooper. "I do think for an eighteen year old to be that self-assured with his looks and his intelligence is quite rare, but I think everybody remembers one guy or girl like that who just knew they were going to succeed no matter what happened, and Dakin is one of those people." Was it a hard character to play? "The tough thing about playing him was trying to give him more charm than arrogance." "The History Boys" is written by Alan Bennett based on his Tony Award-winning play and directed by Nicholas Hytner who first brought the story to the stage at London’s National Theatre, where he serves as the director. As in the original National Theatre production, the film’s cast is led by Tony winner Richard Griffiths, Tony winner Frances de la Tour, Stephen Campbell Moore with Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, James Corden, Jamie Parker, Russell Tovey, Samuel Anderson, Sacha Dhawan, and Andrew Knott reprising their roles as the eight diverse history boys and Clive Merrison and introducing Penelope Wilton as the art teacher Mrs. Bibby, Adrian Scarborough as the Physical Education teacher Mr. Wilkes and Georgia Taylor as Fiona, the Headmaster’s alluring secretary. A distinguished British screenwriter, playwright and actor, Alan Bennett recently won his fourth Olivier Award for Best New Play for "The History Boys". Previously he won two Oliviers for "Talking Heads" in 1992 and one for "Single Spies" in 1989. In addition to being nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA Award and a Writers Guild of America Award for the feature film "The Madness Of King George", Bennett won a Writers Guild of Great Britain Award. He has been nominated for eight BAFTA TV Awards and won one for "A Question of Attribution", and received three BAFTA Film nominations. Bennett's career began as an actor and writer for the "Beyond the Fringe" comedy troupe, which also included Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Jonathan Miller. Nicholas Hytner won a BAFTA Award for Best British Film for "The Madness Of King George". He earned both a Tony and an Olivier Award for his direction of "Carousel" and an Olivier Award for "The History Boys". He was awarded the 1989 London Evening Standard Theatre Award and London Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Director for "Miss Saigon" and "Ghetto". Hytner is Artistic Director of London’s National Theatre The Verdict "Comparisons by critics who have had the privilege of seeing the stage version will mean little to those who haven't. Truth is we go the the movies to be entertained and that's what you get in the screen version of "The History Boys", directed by Nicholas Hytner and adapted by Alan Bennett both of whom won Olivier Awards for their work on the stage version. Richard Griffiths (Inspector Henry Crabbe, the star TV'S "Pie In The Sky"), Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances de la Tour, Cilve Merrison and a lively cast of originals combine talents for what should prove to be in the end, a lively, witty and most satisfying experience for those who enjoy quality cinema in the British tradition. Look out for the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD in stores under the Warner Music label. It is most memorable, perfectly encapsulating the spirit, energy and mood of the eighties. Very recommended. 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "THE HISTORY BOYS" stars .......
Best Actor on Broadway Tony Award winner Richard Griffiths ["Chariots Of Fire", "Guarding Tess", "Sleepy Hollow", "Stage Beauty", and "Harry Potter I, II & III"]; Clive Merrison ["Riddles of the Sphinx", "Firefox", "Saving Grace" and "The Discovery of Heaven"]; Evening Standard Best Film Actress Award and Variety Club Best Actress Award winner Frances de la Tour ["Rising Damp", "Cherry Orchard" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire"]; Stephen Campbell Moore ["Bright Young Things", "A Good Woman", "Normal for Norfolk" and "Amazing Grace"]; Samuel Anderson ["The History Boys"]; James Corden ["Heartlands", "The Last Hangman", "Starter For Ten" and "Heroes and Villains"]; Sacha Dhawan ["The History Boys"]; Dominic Cooper ["From Hell", "The Final Curtain", "Breakfast on Pluto" and "Starter For Ten"] and Maggie McCarthy ["Hilary and Jackie", "Darkness Falls", "Angela's Ashes", "Ali G Indahouse" and "Calendar Girls"] as the Lollipop Lady.
"THE HISTORY BOYS" was .......
directed by BAFTA, Laurence Olivier and TONY AWards winner Nicholas Hytner ["The Madness of King George", "The Crucible", "The Object of My Affection" and "Centre Stage"]; screenplay by Alan Bennett ["A Private Function", "Prick Up Your Ears" and "The Madness of King George"]; adpated from the original stageplay by Laurence Olivier Outstanding Entertainment Award and Laurence Olivier Most Outstanding Performance in a Musical or Entertainment Award winner Alan Bennett ["The Lady in the Van", "A Woman of No Importance", "Bed Among the Lentils" and "Soldiering On"]; director of photography British Society of Cinematographers and Evening Standard British Film Awards winner Andrew Dunn B.S.C. ["Gosford Park", "Stage Beauty", "Hitch", "Mrs Henderson Presents" and "Miss Potter"]; original music by Five time Academy Award ® and three-time Grammy Awards ® nominee; Ivor Novello and EMMY ® award winner George Fenton ["Ghandi", "You've Got Mail", "Groundhog Day" and "Ae Fond Kiss"] production design by John Beard ["Enigma, "The Last Temptation Of Christ", "K-PAX" and "Skelton Key"] and costume design by Justine Luxton ["The Mystery of Edwin Drood", "Leon the Pig Farmer" and "Love + Hate"]. Who's Who?

Richard Griffiths Clive Merrison Frances de la Tour Stephen Campbell Moore Samuel Anderson James Corden Andrew Knott Russell Tovey Jamie Parker Dominic Cooper Samuel Barnett Sacha Dhawan Penelope Wilton Adrian Scarborough Georgia Taylor Maggie McCarthy

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Hector The Headmaster Mrs Lintott Irwin Crowther Timms Lockwood Rudge Scripps Dakin Posner Akhtar Mrs Bibby Wilkes Fiona Lollipop Lady

Run Time 112 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2007 - Fox Searchlight Pictures - All Rights Reserved ©2007 All Rights Reserved The Movie Pages - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.