The good things: the acting is top notch, and it's vaguely interesting
The rest of it: I just don't know where to start...
The obvious thing is the bizarre celebration of sexual abuse of school children which the film romanticises and tries to pass off as normal and an in-joke amongst teachers and children.
Beyond this, the entire thing is unbelievable fabrication of an alternative reality that is some kind of homosexual- liberal-pseudo-intellectual fantasy. No 18 yo boys talk like that anywhere in the world, not even in the 80s. They talk back and forth as if in a Shakespeare play, and spontaneously break in to song and drama routines in the middle of lesson. They also seem to idolise the massively overweight sweaty, lecherous old teacher who molests them on his motorbike, when in reality the boys would ridicule him and try to give him a nervous breakdown. Every relationship in this film is unbelievable: the boys love the old sweaty pervert, but initially seem to hate the new teacher who is nice, talks to them in a relatively normal way, and actually teaches them proper interesting lessons. The teachers seem to have no problem with hanging out with the students, smoking, and hiding from the headteacher, and the boys treat the staff in a similar way, at one point asking his teacher to 'suck him off', and not in a cheeky way, but as a genuine request.
The thing that really got to me was that despite these students acting like literature Dons from the 16th century, Bennett has throne in bizarre tokenistic 'these are working class, uneducated boys' moments. First off, these boys already act like Oxbridge graduates, so the idea that they are struggling against their social situation to get in to Oxbridge is preposterous. Secondly, despite being to quote and explain the works of many literary figures off the top of their heads, and have spontaneous complex debates on the fine details of every historical event, we are expected to believe that they've never heard of Nietzsche or Jean Paul Sartre. They also just suddenly act 'dumb working class' for a few seconds when required to labour a point.
I can't be bothered to write anymore, but I could go on.
The rest of it: I just don't know where to start...
The obvious thing is the bizarre celebration of sexual abuse of school children which the film romanticises and tries to pass off as normal and an in-joke amongst teachers and children.
Beyond this, the entire thing is unbelievable fabrication of an alternative reality that is some kind of homosexual- liberal-pseudo-intellectual fantasy. No 18 yo boys talk like that anywhere in the world, not even in the 80s. They talk back and forth as if in a Shakespeare play, and spontaneously break in to song and drama routines in the middle of lesson. They also seem to idolise the massively overweight sweaty, lecherous old teacher who molests them on his motorbike, when in reality the boys would ridicule him and try to give him a nervous breakdown. Every relationship in this film is unbelievable: the boys love the old sweaty pervert, but initially seem to hate the new teacher who is nice, talks to them in a relatively normal way, and actually teaches them proper interesting lessons. The teachers seem to have no problem with hanging out with the students, smoking, and hiding from the headteacher, and the boys treat the staff in a similar way, at one point asking his teacher to 'suck him off', and not in a cheeky way, but as a genuine request.
The thing that really got to me was that despite these students acting like literature Dons from the 16th century, Bennett has throne in bizarre tokenistic 'these are working class, uneducated boys' moments. First off, these boys already act like Oxbridge graduates, so the idea that they are struggling against their social situation to get in to Oxbridge is preposterous. Secondly, despite being to quote and explain the works of many literary figures off the top of their heads, and have spontaneous complex debates on the fine details of every historical event, we are expected to believe that they've never heard of Nietzsche or Jean Paul Sartre. They also just suddenly act 'dumb working class' for a few seconds when required to labour a point.
I can't be bothered to write anymore, but I could go on.