When the film you are going to see is about the creation of the oxford dictionary and the dialogue is littered with amazing and esoteric words, there is a sense of obligation to make your review loquacious and verbose. I will try to contain myself.
The Professor and the Mad Man (dir. Farhad Safinia) is based on a novel of the same name by Simon Winchester. It has been delayed for release due to the director and the star, Mel Gibson as the Professor James Murray, having disavowed the film due to them not being able to complete it to a level they were satisfied with. So going in I thought it might not make sense or just be a hodgepodge of disconnected ideas.
The film centers around Murray and his attempt to make the first complete dictionary of the English language. He is tasked with this Sisyphean endeavour by the people at the illustrious Oxford University, where the dictionary gets its name. They, however, don’t think he is up to the task as he has no degree and is not a “learned man” as they are. It was not until he was vouched for by one of the Oxford team did he get a chance to create his Magnum Opus.
Murray was smart enough to know that he couldn’t do this by himself and he had an ingenious idea to send out requests for the public to do some of the work for him. Despite this help, the task seems to be too grand for anyone to conquer and it is not until one man started to send in word after word that those people toiling away could start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
This mysterious man was a convicted murderer and guest at a mental institution, Dr William Chester Minor (Sean Penn). Minor is a genius but very troubled man, he appears to suffer from PTSD as well as other mental health issues but Minor and Murray formed a fast friendship around the love for words and their uses.
The main conflicts of the film have to do with institutions versus individuals. One is the institution of Oxford, or more specifically the people who are in charge of the creation of the dictionary, want there to be corners cut so they can release the dictionary to make some money. The other is the health care of mental patients and the barbaric and horrendous experiments that were attempted to “cure” the patients.
Ada Murray (Jennifer Ehle), the wife of James Murray, and Eliza Merrett (Natalie Dormer) the widow of the man Minor killed bring humanity back into the film that is otherwise weighed down by the subject matter. Frederick Furnivall (Steve Coogan) and Mr Muncie (Eddie Marsan) also show that within institutions there are good people as well as the bad ones.
I wonder what Gibson and Safinia thought was left out of the film. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, and it won’t appeal to everyone. The subject matter in parts is very dry and in other parts is very hard to watch i.e treatment of mental health patients, but the cast is strong and the performances are good and I think it’s a hopeful film in which people that care can create great outcomes and in our cynical age that feels like a good thing.
27 January 2020
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe