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On the subject of games, much of the film's plot is dedicated to the romantic machinations of one of the more precocious students, the swaggering Dakin (Dominic Cooper), who recognizes his sexual power early on and doesn't see gender or status as an obstacle to using it. Griffiths explains: “Dakin's great gift is that he knows that we're all universally alike. We're all individual; every one of us is different from every other one as a snowflake is different from another, but we're all snowflakes. So look at the points of likeness; that's what Dakin does. He can look at a boy or a girl and make moves, because he knows that if he feels it, they probably do. Dakin's onto that, but Hector never is. Hector's a very unique person. Hector thinks he's the only one with these problems — that's the problem for him. Dakin knows everyone has the same problems.”

While Dakin's sexuality might be up for discussion based on some of his behavior, Dominic Cooper insists that Dakin only has power in mind, not sexual identity. “Dakin is so confident that he seems to be able to get what he wants out of people without offending them,” he says. “I do think for an 18-year-old to be that self-assured with his looks and his intelligence is quite rare, but I think everybody remembers a guy or girl like that who just knew they were going to succeed no matter what happened. … The tough thing was trying to give him more charm than arrogance.”

While Cooper may have felt that his character of Dakin was more of a “sexual opportunist” than a bisexual, Samuel Barnett's character, the lovestruck Posner, is far more clear-cut. As the Posner himself says to Irwin: “I'm small, I'm Jewish, I'm homosexual, and I live in Sheffield . I'm f***ed.” Barnett sees the opportunity to play a young man at such an emotional crossroads as “an incredible gift.”

He says of the role: “His is a really sensitive, soulful part that helped me to tap right back into what it's like to be a teenager and all that you go through. Posner sort of grows up through not getting what he wants. I don't think that's unusual, but what is unusual about Posner is that his sexuality is open at school, and nobody really undermines that.”

Hytner weighs in on the fact that the boys seem oddly accepting of Posner's openly gay sexuality for a group of working-class suburban teens in 1983: “I went back for the first time in years to talk to [his own school] about this film and three of them came to talk to me, 17 and 18 years old … and two of them said that they were gay and were happily chatting about it. At the same school 30 years ago, I was gay … and at this stage in our careers we had just done A-levels, we were trying to get into Oxford and Cambridge, at that point we were self-consciously not homophobic.”

Hytner continues: “And I was tentatively — and it was hard — open. And no one was going to bully me about it. The little kids would have bullied each other, [but] the older kids wouldn't have because they knew it was wrong. I think the prejudice still ran — it probably ran quite deep — but we were educated.”

Given the themes of fallible authority and sexual misconduct in the film, it's nearly impossible to discuss The History Boys independent of the recent sex scandals in the United States. When I asked Hytner how Boys might be different if it took place in 2006 instead of 1983, he replied: “To dramatize the debate, you have to go back to the '80s; you have to. …

“I think now kids are much more aware that a hand on the knee or a hand feeling behind on a motorbike is something that they should hold up their hand and report, and that's probably correct. Because [Hector's] behavior is — it's very clear that he's not interested in the vulnerable ones or the younger ones — he won't touch Posner. I think he won't touch Posner because touching Posner would mean something to Posner and would affect Posner, whereas those big lads just go ‘f*** off' and it's no big deal to them.”

Independent of the incidents of sexual misconduct in the story, the central theme of the film is “good faith” versus “bad faith” education: whether one should be taught what is true or trained in the art of spin. As this interview took place on the day of our midterm elections, Hytner connected the film's message to the current political climate: “So much of politics is in bad faith. … This cynical cabal in the White House exploiting voters' fear of stuff they actually don't give a shit about in order to do what they want to do on a canvas that they do think is important. Does Dick Cheney really give a shit about gay marriage? Do you think he cares about it? That's what's so cynical.”

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