Alan Bennett's much-decorated theater piece comes to the screen with its original stage director and cast intact: Nicholas Hytner, that would be, and Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances de la Tour, et al. A permanent record, as it were, further decorated, for the occasion, with extraneous bits of rockin' musical accompaniment and jumpy cutting. The blue-y, icy, ashy palette, meantime, rather curiously resembles Martin Scorsese's imitation in The Aviator of the antique two-color process. It seems safe to assume that the color in the stage version was more lifelike. As to the content: the foreignness of the British school system -- an octet of Oxbridge candidates prepped by a trio of tutors -- will be easy enough for American viewers to grasp, though the Yorkshire accents will present them with persistent difficulties. The two male teachers -- the portly old quotation-dropping, education-made-fun one and the lean young results-oriented one -- each have more than a teacherly interest in the lads, but that is thankfully not the main focus. It's just another element in the composition. To say what might actually be the main focus presents its own difficulties. (Both teaching methods have their pros and cons. The only viable antagonist is the stiff-necked and overacted Headmaster. And the lads, while physically well differentiated, are democratically indistinct as personalities.) It might be easier just to say the focus is diffuse. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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