national treasure love shock!

Do you know? I almost forgot why Alan Bennett is the so-called National Treasure he is, so bored had I become with the constant adulation one encounters whenever his name is mentioned. But I've seen his plays, watched his movies, read his books. I should have remembered.

And now I've just finished watching - so belatedly (this is one play I didn't make it to) - The History Boys. I wish, now, badly, that I had seen it on the stage. I love it. It is full of scenes of immense delicacy and power. It's subtle, but I can't help thinking it must have been more so on the stage. There's a slickefying thing that happens when they turn something into a movie, especially something by Alan Bennett, I feel. The intimacy is lost. Reading his books he whispers into your ear; seeing a play the actors speak only to you; and you can see them, really see them: it's warts and all. But on the screen there have been too many opportunities to make it perfect, which always means making it that bit more bland, corporate, safe.

I remember reading some reviews when the film came out that put it very cogently, all the flaws, a catalogue of "things that were better in the play;" but here are some things that are really working in the film.

Richard Griffiths is astounding, as always, and as large with humanity and love as with - ahem - corpulence. Sure, he's a caricature, but he's alive. Oh, and increasingly I idolise Frances de la Tour; can that be so wrong??

And as "ye will know the tree by its fruits," so the serial surprise of all that Griffiths' teacher Hector has given the boys, the sight of it sticking to each of them in his own way, keeps surprising in a way mere caricature can't. One scene, in fact, surprised me into tears: the two boys suddenly breaking into a pitch-perfect rendition of the closing scene of Brief Encounter. Deliciously cheesy, painfully brilliant, gorgeously done. In its own small way, as poignant as the original. (This is, as someone was asking the other day for a definition, exactly what ekphrastic art should be and do: take a work of art as a starting place and then spring off into your own thing.)

It's code, of course: not only is the film about the point where an old style of teaching (and learning) lost the fight to the Thatcherite (now Blairite) way, it is also about the old and new styles of being homosexual; the boy in this scene, Posner, is realising that he is gay, and is doomed to follow in the footsteps of Hector's particular tragedy. It strikes me that I have read reviews that cavilled with this (and other elements of the play), that said it was too anachronistic to work. Of course the roots of the story lie in the fifties, but that was felt too remote, so it was moved to 1983. I think in this knowledge one might afford Bennett a little latitude: the emotional power of this piece is so strong and true that even a slight suspension of disbelief is more than enough.

The boys are wonderful. The younger, cynical, new-style teacher, Irwin - who is overtly placed as Griffiths' successor - turns out also to be gay, but even post-Stonewall this is portrayed as slightly tragic... I remember 1983, I remember how even in London it seemed a little risqué to be really openly gay... people made much more of a fuss of it than they do now.

So, the boys. Dominic Cooper as Dakin, the sex-crazed - no, power-hungry - boy (Frances de la Tour in the film calls him "cunt-struck,", but by the end of the film he's asking the new teacher to suck him off, and this is another scene where I was gasping: Stephen Campbell Moore, as Irwin, is so scared here that you can feel the sweat, and it is all so incredibly sexy that even watching it you're afraid, remembering who the boy is); even though you can see what Dakin's like you can't help feeling the attraction. (Yet another scene that blew me away, without giving anything away, is near the end, in the hallway, when Hector and Irwin have a deep, deeply honest, and almost unspoken conversation about their feelings for the boys. This is before the propositioning scene, and sets us up for it of course, because.... no, see the film.)

Samuel Barnett as Posner, the gay boy, is beautiful. He sings like an angel. (Hector teaches them songs; when Posner sings "Bewitched, Botherd and Bewildered," mainly to Dakin, with whom he is openly in unrequited love, it does in fact function dramatically, and emotionally.)

(Aside: You know. John Sutherland might have been right up to a point when he said in a review that the music was wrong for 1983, and even goes so far as to suggest that Posner would have liked Boy George! Good grief. The boys are frequently seen with Walkman earphones; but we're being shown their life in the classroom. and not long at all after 1983 we had a huge craze for Nina Simone; even in 1983 Bryan Ferry was covering old songs; so I think it's fine.)

Oh, in short, I think it's a fine film! It's a film about love. And loss, as each of the boys is about to lose their childhood - it's that drenched cusp. And mortality, realising who and what you really are. It's visually beautiful. And it has totally reminded me why I love Alan Bennett.

Oh, and by the way: you may be reading this and feeling like you want to be reminded of Dead Poets' Society; don't be. Just don't.