[Shameful Movie of the Week] |
Christian groups are outraged that Dimension would dare release a horror film like Black Christmas on Christmas Day. Us, we're just outraged that they didn't screen it for review. |
Just when you're settling in for a rousing, eloquent tussle between classicism and pragmatism, though, Bennett complicates matters by revealing both of his role models as benign lechers. Hector rides to and from school on a motorcycle, and volunteers each day to give one of his students a lift home; the boys willingly take turns, despite knowing that their beloved professor's hand will find its way into their lap at every stoplight en route. Irwin, meanwhile, develops a smoldering crush on Dakin (Dominic Cooper), the most charismatic of the lot—and though Dakin is ostensibly straight, he seems more than willing to dispense blowjobs in lieu of the traditional apple on the desk. Before long, questions of pedagogy have been subsumed by all this carnal melodrama; the lesson the audience will take away, given Bennett's sympathetic scolding, is that sexual abuse is just a charming peccadillo when committed by a poetic soul.
Bennett can't actually say that, of course, which is where the film's weirdly retro attitude toward homosexuality comes into play. (WARNING: I can't address this without spoiling the end of the movie, so save this paragraph for later if you plan to see it.) In theory, the characters' orientation shouldn't really matter—the offense involves the abuse of trust between an adult authority figure and a child. But I invite you to imagine The History Boys as The History Girls, with fat, sixtyish Hector groping his hand beneath teenage skirts every afternoon on his motorcycle. Does he still seem misguided but fundamentally decent, a good man being unjustly persecuted for a minor sin borne of pure affection? Because that's how Hector is portrayed here. (Irwin is viewed somewhat more critically, but his prospective dalliance with Dakin still comes across as no big deal.) And since Bennett can't quite bring himself to openly condone such aberrant behavior, he resorts to the same solution that dramatists used in the '50s and '60s when tackling gay desire: empathize for two hours, then kill 'em off. When Irwin climbed on the back of Hector's motorcycle near film's end, I actually waved goodbye at the screen. Even well into the 21st century, these men are just too sensitive to live.