The Professor and the Madman product reviews

It is a peculiar turn of events when an actor sues the film studio to attempt to prevent the release of a film. This off-screen drama from star Mel Gibson came about as he wanted to spend millions on re-shoots to add another 30 minutes to the filmâ ™s run-time, and in the studio ended up instead cutting the film by 30 minutes. At just over two hours, The Professor and The Madman does start to feel lengthy, so a three-hour run-time would certainly seem excessive.

Being based on a true story, The Professor and the Madman stars Mel Gibson as philologist, Professor James Murray, and Sean Penn as the veteran army surgeon, Dr William Chester Minor. The philologist being a non-English multi-linguist, and the veteran, an American mentally-unstable murderer, there is definitely an intriguing mix of personality traits as these two unlikely collaborators work to complete the first Oxford dictionary.

The premise has a much more to give than one would reasonably foresee. In this modern day, dictionaries have lost their sense of superiority and distinction, the large volumes being replaced by a quick internet search on oneâ ™s phone. Much like how the definitions of words have evolved over time, the purpose of a dictionary has also changed since the ideaâ ™s inception. Not just simply a description of the word that a dictionary is today, the dictionary was also originally intended to be a catalogue of the wordâ ™s spelling, pronunciation, and evolution of use since its origin. The scope of the work required to do this for the first time, to try and categorically describe the history and current state of every single word ever used in the English language, is extraordinary and the difficulty in not only collecting the words together but researching the history is a task that is worthy of praise.

The real question, however, asks whether this story is enticing enough for a film. While The Professor and the Madman postures itself around the goals of the Professor, it is the Madmanâ ™s arc that injects the most dramatic tension, and has the most intriguing content, justifiably; seeing as the film is based on the book by Simon Winchester, The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words. It is, in fact, madman Minor that is the focal point, and Sean Penn does an exemplary job in the role.

What keeps the audience engaged, but the character development of Minor, suitably painting him as an impressively intelligent, but traumatised and mentally ill veteran. There is an almost bottomless well of sympathy for the (both mentally and physically) tortured man. There is a surprising amount of joy to be found in Murray and Minor's friendship which originates from a mutual obsession. Their friendship is both endearing but inconsistently developed, feels forced at times because of the pacing, but the acting prowess still forms a visible sense of comradery and bromance. At their best, Penn and Gibson look like a loving pair, flirting and vying to impress the other with their intellectualism, getting hot and heavy over the scope of each otherâ ™s diction.

Gibson and Penn are the only pull factor to the film, due to the limited presence of any other supporting characters; even Natalie Dormer's role has minimal appeal. Other characters have been included to provide a sense of conflict, but--much like when it comes to the friendship between Minor and Murrayâ"there is not enough on-screen time to properly convey a proper progression and evolution towards the strength of emotion being conveyed.

From a visual perspective, the film starts off abhorrently, with some handheld shaky cam that is so disorienting you would be forgiven for thinking they had strapped the camera to a five-year-old running towards an ice cream truck. It barely manages to maintain any semblance of framing and the jarring movements are enough to unsettle ones stomach especially when juxtaposed to the stable cam. After about five minutes however, things improve and the remainder of the cinematography is adequate, with an authentic (albeit drab) colour scheme.

This is a story of the late life of Dr William Chester Minor, in the guise of a story on the origin of the Oxford Dictionary. A psychological drama of sorts, Pennâ ™s performance stands out far above the rest, and manages to bring some intrigue to an otherwise tedious premise. In hindsight, a further 30 minutes may have over-encumbered the film, but it also may have helped forge more organic relationships and conflict. We will never know.