Near the beginning of the film adaptation of the stage hit The History Boys, a teacher responds to a pupil's question with, “What's truth got to do with it? What's truth got to do with anything?” In another classroom down the hall, a different teacher tells the same group that the pain of true love is the only education worth having. This dichotomy, and the fluid, highly personal nature of education in general, is the struggle at the center of writer Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner's fascinating and occasionally brilliant film.

But despite a solid cast including both theater vets (the entire main cast of the original National Theatre stage production is reassembled here) and vibrant newcomers, as well as an uncompromising script that delights in throwing questions at its audience, The History Boys is not an unqualified success. The film struggles through fits and starts, narrowly avoiding histrionics and rather easy sentimentalizing to reach its somewhat unsatisfying and defiantly vague conclusion. While the goal of our heroes may be to make it to university, the film's focus is clearly the journey, not the destination.

In the summer of 1983, eight of the brightest young men of an all-male suburban public school have qualified for admission interviews to Oxbridge. (Despite repeated reference to the students as “boys” — which could lead to confusion when the subject of sexual misconduct is raised later on — these are recent high school graduates, not children.) It's a first for the school, and the overzealous and rather tacky headmaster (played within an inch of outright parody by Clive Merrison) devises a curriculum to ensure that his students gain admission and scholarships to the esteemed universities.

To help the students cram, he brings aboard meandering but beloved professor Hector (Richard Griffiths), tough-but-loving history marm Mrs. Lintott (Frances de la Tour) and results-oriented newcomer Tom Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore). The heady exchange of information and ideals that follows creates a whirlwind of conflicting influences, forcing students and teachers alike to question everything that they believe about the nature and purpose of education.

What the “boys” encounter is essentially a crash course in world perception, using the study of history as a model. Hector believes that hard facts combined with a broad general understanding of literature and the arts will breed well-rounded and sensitive men, and to him the truth is everything.

Irwin, on the other hand, believes in abandoning the truth in favor of an “edge.” He'll argue the other side on any topic if it will give him the upper hand, and he believes that history is determined by the present, not the past.

In between is Lintott, who stays mostly out of the fray, only weighing in with her views on history in one memorable scene. Her declaration that history is “women following behind men with the bucket” is quite appropriate, given the trouble and confusion that these men are able to cause one another. While it seems that Hector and Irwin's differences may be irreconcilable, eventually it becomes clear that the men are far more similar than they would expect.

Much like Gus Van Sant's puzzling Elephant, The History Boys takes place in what seems to be a romanticized homosexual fantasy of high school. These young men play together, work together, sing show tunes together, reenact scenes from Noel Coward's Brief Encounter with one another, and even allow their dotty but revered mentor Hector to paw at their privates when he takes them on motorbike rides.

But this isn't a simple case of a teacher making inappropriate advances on a student. As the pressure builds for the young men and they commit more fully to their various paths, they also reveal their romantic love for one another (gay, sensitive Posner pines openly for dashing, caddish Dakin) and engage in sexual power plays with their male superiors (in the case of Dakin with one of the teachers).

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