Review

Culture

Education

7 September 2023

6 min read

Back to school on the big screen

It’s back to school for many. Yaroslav Walker picks his favourite films capturing the friendship, the drama, and the expectation of school life and beyond.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

School students walk across a playground confidently talking and laughing with us

The History Boys.

BBC Films.

The summer is coming to an end, the last BBQ embers are sputtering to sleep, the weather…appears not to have been told, at least in London! Sweltering! Most importantly of all, our children are back to school, nursery or college. In light of this momentous time of year here are my top five back to school film choices, one each for the last five decades, and some honourable mentions.

1970s - American Grafitti

A teenage couple dressed in 1950s clothes sit on a kerb in deep conversation.

Charles Martin Smith and Candy Clark in American Graffiti

American Graffiti isn’t just a lovely piece of nostalgia now, it was back then. A misty-eyed look back at 60s Americana, this film is packed with slicked-back hair, classic cars, diners with roller-skating waitresses, and the complexities of teenage romance. Four friends meet on the last day of summer to experience the joys of a California evening one last time before two of them jet off to college ‘back East’. Curt is unsure about his future and is even considering staying in his hometown. Steve is hubristically thrilled about the prospect of fleeing his humdrum life and even shedding his loving girlfriend for new conquests. Terry is insecure and simply desperate to prove he is as good as everyone else, and Milner is the older friend who never left town and is a local-legend drag-racer. Over the course of a long night they go their separate ways, have adventures, and finally find some closure to their ongoing anxieties: one finds new confidence, another begins to take risks, another learns to be happy with his lot, and Milner wins a drag race…oh, an learns the genuine happiness that can be found in adult responsibility. It's too long, but it is a lovely atmosphere to meander about in, and is edited superbly so it never really drags. With superb performances and a soundtrack bursting with 50s and 60s hits, this is well worth a watch.

1980s - The Breakfast Club

Five glum students perch on stools in school room.

Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club.

Well what else could it have been!? In many ways the film set the classic pattern of US High School living (which did and sometimes still does inform UK attitudes) and the High School movie. John Hughes didn’t invent these archetypes and wasn’t the first to put them on celluloid, but he was the master of crystallising them. The Breakfast Club presents an all-day detention that just so happens to have a representative from every social caste of the High School system: Andrew the jock (Emelio Esteves), Brian the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), Allison the weirdo (Ally Sheedy), Claire the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), and Bender the burnout (Judd Nelson). These five kids have nothing in common but their dislike of the domineering Vice-Principal (Paul Gleason was born for this role!)…OR DO THEY!? Whereas American Graffiti explored the process of maturing into adulthood and the taking charge of one’s sense of self (with a background hum of Vietnam paranoia and the end of golden Americana days), The Breakfast Club is much more forthright in demonstrating just how difficult being a teenager is. These kids don’t need help ‘growing up’, if anything they need to be allowed to be kids. Over the course of the day their defences break down and they learn that each of them has expectations and pressures that seem overwhelming, and grown to have genuine respect and compassion for each other. A script that is sometimes on-the-nose and prone to soliloquy is saved by the sheer bravura of the performances. A go to comfort film, that will always be iconic. Any film which ends with Simple Minds is a 5 star affair for me.

1990s - The Faculty

Two students walk down a school corridor, one looking away.

Elijah Wood and Jordana Brewster in The Faculty.

We move to slightly scarier fare with the 90s. The Faculty asks the question you were all asking…what if Invasion of the Bodysnatchers took place in an American high school? The answer is subtext; a lot of subtext and allegory. You know, when you’re a teenager, everything can seem quite tough. The world can seem like it's against you. It can seem like everyone you know has changed overnight and you’re lost in a sea of hostile faces. It can seem like a parasitic alien is using your school as a beachhead for a planetary takeover. The Faculty is cinematic junk-food and unapologetically so. It is camp and silly and fun. It takes those Hughesian archetypes, puts them on steroids, and then throws them into a plot joyfully riffing on the most classic sci-fi and horror tropes - all held nicely together with a quip-filled Kevin Williamson screenplay. An underrated Robert Rodriguez directorial effort which shows that he can work well across genres, and an excellent opportunity to see early performances from Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, and…wait…is that Usher in that film!?

2000s - The History Boys

Yes, we move to British shores at last. Alan Bennett’s stage-play is brought to beautiful cinematic life by original director Nicholas Hytner, who has an excellent track record of translating Bennett’s work from stage to screen. It’s another flash of nostalgia (which all such films are, as adult writers and directors look back to their own school days and teenage angst and adventure) which transports the viewer to 1980s Sheffield. A group of friends at the local Grammar School have all done very well in their A Levels and are now put to the task of preparing for the Oxford entrance exams. All are lovers of History (well, maybe not Rudge) and have received an enviously eclectic education in the full gamut of culture from the eccentric and long-suffering Hector. Like all the films above, The History Boys explores the challenges of adolescence, but with a specific focus on ‘doing well’ in a particularly British way. Sporting excellence or popularity aren’t the measure of student success - Oxbridge is. The teachers don’t push the young men nearly as much as they do themselves, seeing a place at Oxford as the best form of advancement. The witty and moving script also touches on the issue of infatuation, attraction, sexual fluidity, and chaste reciprocity: Posner’s love for Dakin being encouraged only so far in some sort of mutually agreed stand-off, Dakin’s willingness to sleep with the substitute teacher Irwin, and (of course) Hector’s tradition of giving the boys a ride home on his motorcycle and…appreciating them aesthetically. Not easy subject matter, but written and directed and shot and performed with such sensitivity that you can’t help but fall in love with every character.

2010s - The Inbetweeners Movie

Two students look at each in in incomprehension.

Blake Harrison and Simon Bird in The Inbetweeners.

We end with crudity. Crudity and friendship and a booze-filled week in Crete. Lovers of the TV show (I was one) - which explored the trials and tribulations of four unpopular, unremarkable, and unfortunate teens at a British comprehensive school- were well served by this upgrade. TV comedies, like plays, rarely translate well; The Inbetweeners Movie is an honourable exception. Will, Simon, Jay, and Neil have come to the end of their school days and decide that they need one final hurrah before they go their separate ways. The proceeding 90 minutes is a torrent of drunken antics, foul-mouthed discourse, and crass toilet humour, all threaded together by hapless and fruitless sexual intrigue. 90 mins of that might seem like it would wear thin, but The Inbetweeners Movie is too kind-hearted to go stale (unlike its successor which was a genuinely squalid and unpleasant affair which had me questioning humanity). The four young men are so pathetic in the true sense of the word, that you can’t help but cheer for them. The overall message of friendship as a virtue that transcends the ups-and-downs of life give the salty humour a sweet edge. For a certain generation - mine - this might be the definitive British school movie.

Honourable Mentions

Grease

Sort of like American Graffiti…but better. I’m talking Travolta, I’m talking Newton-John, I’m talking songs that are bullet-proof! Graffiti is on the official list because it speaks to the many cultural and political undercurrents of the time…but Grease is so much more fun. If you can only see one of the two, see Grease!

Gregory’s Girl

Pipped by Breakfast because of the archetypes and Simple Minds, but probably one of the finest British rom-coms ever!

Mean Girls

Obviously. It's so fetch!

Review

Books

Comedy

Culture

Trauma

23 October 2024

5 min read

Miranda Hart's diagnosis of the unseen

Beyond a medical illness she's on to something supernatural.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

On a TV chat show, guests look to one of their own talking to the audience.

Mirnada regales a chat show.

There I was, standing in the book aisle with a choice before me. One that would dictate my mental state for the week ahead: I could pick up Boris Johnson’s hotly anticipated autobiography (although, at £30, it would mean putting the bottle of wine in my basket back on the shelf) or I could choose Miranda Hart’s latest literary offering.

Externally, all seemed calm. Internally, an almighty battle of the books was raging within me. The price of Boris’ ruled out the option of buying both. So, which should I pick? Whose voice should I invite to live inside my brain for the next five days? Both books were offering me a cultural bandwagon to hop on, I just had to decide which wagon looked like the better option.

Boris… Miranda… Boris… Miranda… Boris… Miranda…

After some intense deliberation, I popped BoJo’s memoir back on the shelf and became the proud owner of Miranda Hart’s new book. And I must admit, after hearing from friends who chose Boris to be the victor of their own battle of the books, I am very happy with my decision.

Miranda Hart, the deeply beloved comic actor, sit-com writer, and stand-up comedian, hasn’t been entirely honest with us. For decades, she has been suffering with what she now knows to be Lyme Disease. In her book, she draws back the curtain and reveals a lifetime worth of suffering with illness after illness – bronchitis, tonsillitis, pericarditis, gastroenteritis, labyrinthitis – as Miranda succinctly puts it, ‘too many itises’. Despite illness being her body’s default state, Miranda kept calm(ish) and kept on. That is, until around a decade ago when her symptoms became simply unbearable.

She tells the story of collapsing onto her living room floor, extreme fatigue rendering her utterly unable to pick herself up. This was the beginning of months of being bedbound and years of having to press pause on her life. Miranda recalls how she wept with relief at being able to crawl to the bathroom, of how she had to watch the television with sunglasses on because of neurological symptoms, and how she would ‘look at a cup of tea on the table and wonder if I had the strength to take a sip’. She also paints a terrifying picture of not being believed - of living with an illness that nobody can understand, of suffering with symptoms that have no explanation. Miranda contracted Lyme Disease when she was fourteen, and had it diagnosed when she was in her forties.

It seems that Miranda Hart is trusting that all that she can see is not all that there is – that her suffering is not the truest thing about her and that she doesn’t need to be the source of all of her healing.

For those with no experience of living with a chronic illness, Miranda’s honesty will open your eyes to the pain and frustration that comes with your body not allowing you to live the life you crave. If you do have experience of chronic illness, this book will make you feel seen.

But, alas, this is Miranda Hart we’re talking about. If you’re looking for a woe-is-me book, this isn’t it (maybe you’d have more luck trying Boris?). This book is brimming with:

A) End-of-chapter dance breaks

B) Jokes about wind (obviously)

C) Theology

I kid you not.

Each of her chapters outline a ‘treasure’ that she has found in the depth of her suffering, the ‘watchwords’ that she uses to encapsulate these treasures are: love, faithfulness, peace, self-control, kindness, goodness, joy, gentleness and patience.

I got to chapter four of the book and had myself a real – ‘hang on a minute…’ - moment. As a Christian, I’ve grown up with another way of grouping those words together: I call them ‘the fruits of the Spirit’.

By chapter five I was convinced: Miranda Hart has released a spiritual book.

She has, quite excellently, trojan-horsed a bunch of Bible into the Sunday Times best-seller’s chart. And nobody seems to have noticed, I almost feel a little guilty for outing her. All the book reviews I’ve read note the hard-won warmth and wisdom included in this book (both of which are there, by the way) and conclude that it is a truly lovely self-help manual. And that’s where they’re wrong.

This is precisely not self-help.

In fact, I get the subtle sense that the self-help industry is one that irks Miranda a little bit, and understandably so – the idea that we can ice-bath ourselves into wellness must sound odd to someone who can’t pick themselves up off their living room floor. So, I’ll say it again: self-help is not what this book is.

Instead, it seems that Miranda Hart is trusting that all that she can see is not all that there is – that her suffering is not the truest thing about her and that she doesn’t need to be the source of all of her healing. She mentions, again and again, that the truest thing about her (and us, her 'Dear Reader Chums') is that she, and we, are loved. Deeply, unconditionally, unshakably loved. We haven’t earnt it and therefore can’t lose it. In her darkest moments, she had lost everything – her career, her social life, her home, her hopes and dreams - but she never lost that love. Everything else she has to say in the book flows from that belief.

I happen to think she’s dead right – but that is, undeniably, a faith statement. This book is built upon them.

And listen, you could read this lovely book – giggle and weep your way through it – without ever sensing anything supernatural within it. But, make no mistake, there is the supernatural within it.

What Miranda has affectionately called her ‘treasures’ and the Bible calls ‘the fruits of the Spirit’ are just that; they’re what grow when one lives a life informed by and infused with God’s spirit. They’re the tangible symptoms of putting yourself in God’s presence, of keeping company with him. They are him rubbing off on us.

What I’m trying to get at is this: these ‘fruits’, they’re seen in us, but they’re all God. They’re not the fruits of the self and so the way to obtain them cannot be self-help.

Miranda obviously appreciates that belief in any divine/supernatural/transcendent thing can be complex, that the notion of ‘god’ can come with baggage, and religion can be an all-out no-no. And so, she is incredibly subtle with what she has to say. This book is not self-help, but it’s not evangelism either. She uses her beloved ‘ists’ (phycologists, neurologists, sociologists etc.) to unpack the ‘treasures’/’fruits’, showing how recent research and ancient religion have many of the same things to say.

I really am unspeakably glad I didn’t pick Boris.