Film Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

The Browning Version
Directed by Mike Figgis
Paramount Home Video 10/95 DVD/VHS Feature Film
R - some language

The Browning Version is a high-class film directed by Mike Figgis based on a play by Terence Rattigan. Albert Finney gives a tour de force performance as Andrew Crocker-Harris, a stern classics professor at an exclusive English boy's school who has been forced into early retirement. Although one of his most serious students appreciates his high standard of excellence and gives him a heart-felt farewell gift, the other boys make him into an object of derision.

Realizing that his marriage is also in tatters, Crocker-Harris does some soul work and in an emotionally riveting speech before the faculty and student body reveals his failures as a teacher and as a human being. Most individuals never have the courage to plunge into their inner depths and square off against their demons. Seeing this on the screen is quite amazing and morally edifying.

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat