THE HISTORY BOYS

WARNING: IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE HISTORY BOYS AND WANT TO, DON’T READ THIS. IT’S NOT EVEN A SPOILER- I’M GOING TO ACTUALLY EXPLAIN THE ENDING!

So I recently saw the movie The History Boys. It was very good and definitely worth of all the praise it got on Broadway and in the West End. It is the story of boys- and there teachers- training for the placement exams for Oxford and Cambridge. There are, as there always are in film and especially in theatre, twists and turns along the way.

However, in typical cinema style, everything seems to be resolved in the end. The students all make their desired schools (imagine the odds), all the teachers are happy- or at least content, with both their jobs and their lives, and the two gay (perhaps bisexual or bi-curious?) teachers are literally riding off into the sunset on a motorcycle.

It seems like the perfect Hollywood ending, except then it isn’t the ending. Perhaps because it is British and not Hollywood, it can’t end happily ever after. We find out after a premature fade to black that the motorcycle crashed and the older, and more loveable, Mr. Hector died. If this isn’t enough of a downer, at the funeral, we learn the future fates of the boys. One of whom decides to join the army so he can pay for college and he died at the age of 27 or 28.

Inspire of the fact that the film made me tear up, or maybe because of it, I did enjoy this film. It isn’t happy but it is real. The characters are human. It is a beautiful portrayal of real life and I’d recommend it to anyone in search of a good movie.