"A grope is a grope. It's not the Annunciation."

The History Boys is one of those under-the-radar movies that caught my attention because of an Internet review, and word-of-mouth from an Australian friend in a chatroom. It's a wonderful movie, which, as the back of the DVD declares, is about "the true meaning of education and the relative values of happiness and success." And it's sort of sold that way, as a group of British grammar-school boys (the equivalent of US seniors in high school) vie for scholarships and admittance to Oxford University. The design of the front of the DVD implies that these boys will cut corners--perhaps cheat--to get there.

What is not mentioned in any of the ads is what presumably caused American posters on IMDB's message boards to write "This movie is disturbing" and "Unable to finish this movie." That would be the homosexual crushes, longings, and emotions among the "boys" and two of their male teachers. I think it's all sensitively and wittily handled, and interlaces with the overall theme of the movie (just what is history?) as well.

Scriptwriter Alan Bennett (who also wrote the play the movie's based on) has also so loaded the movie with quotations from poetry, philosophy, and popular culture, that most US audiences would baffled as to what they're talking about (I was asked "What's a nancy?" as we watched a scene in which W. H. Auden was quoted). In one scene, a picture of Rupert Brooke is visible over one of the boy's shoulders (Brooke is also quoted). How many Americans would know why Rupert Brooke would be important in a movie with such themes, or why two of the boys enact the end of Brief Encounter in one class?

I am not doing justice to the wit, subtlety, and range of this movie. The cast is superb, with Richard Griffiths almost stealing the entire film as the seemingly pitiable yet heroic Hector, and the always delightful Frances de la Tour (whom I fondly remember as Reggie's secretary in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin) as the history teacher, who absolutely nails a wonderful speech about women in history. (It is she who tells Hector the lines of this post's title.) The boys themselves are uniformly excellent.

Hector is the character who will linger longest in my mind. There's a beautiful scene in which Hector goes over Thomas Hardy's poem "Drummer Hodge" with a student. Why do we teach students about literature, or "general studies" as Hector's class is called? His explanation of the deepest joy in reading moved me to (crybaby!) tears.

And his use of popular culture in his classes was somehow very endearing to someone who, when asked to put together something to show how attractive the study of English could be to first-year college students, showed "Battle of the PBS Superstars" from SCTV to prospective majors. Every once in a while, we do have fun, and then we have to think about how it all fits together. That's the lesson the history boys ultimately learn.