Director
Farhad Safinia

Starring
Sean Penn, Mel Gibson and Natalie Dormer

The Professor and the Madman is the true story of two of the men responsible for the creation of the Oxford dictionary in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Mel Gibson is the ‘professor’ James Murray, a self-educated Scottish teacher who is tasked with the job of editing the dictionary which has struggled to get off the ground. Through a series of ads requesting avid readers to join in the task of sourcing every English word, he is contacted by the ‘madman’ (Sean Penn) in the form of retired US military surgeon Dr. William Chester Minor, who has recently been committed to an insane asylum following the murder of a man during a psychotic episode. Together with a team of fellow researchers, then men set about logging each word and their respective histories over the course of a number of years, whilst Dr. Minor also tries to find redemption for his unspeakable crime.

The film is a hard one to really gauge. While the premise seems a little dull, the real story is the one of the madman trying to find forgiveness and calm in his unrelenting psychosis. Natalie Dormer as the widow of the murdered man who then finds friendship with his killer is a strong performance, however the delivery of this particular story arc is confusing and rushed. In-fact the film as a whole feels that way. By trying to cram in too many elements into the story, the director is unable to deliver the clarity that any of the stories require. It doesn’t help the matter that many of Penn’s mumblings are seemingly incoherent as is the dialogue of Gibson, thanks to his revival of his terrible William Wallace style Scottish accent. It’s an unfortunate distraction because the times when the film does find its clarity, there is something special on show. The friendship between Minor and the guards at the asylum is heartening, and there is a genuine sympathy felt for his plight, given so little was known about psychiatric disorders at the time. Penn does an exceptional job at portraying a man so panicked and terrified from the visions he believes are real, many of which are caused by the horrific acts he was forced to undertake during the Civil War, and Gibson is fine as Murray, despite having a lot less to work with script-wise.

Overall The Professor and the Madman is an interesting film and one that could have quite possibly been excellent with a more experienced director at the helm. But all in all it’s still a film worthy of an audience.

3 Stars

Moviedoc thanks Miranda Brown Publicity for the opportunity to review this film.

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