The Professor and the Madman (2019)

"The Professor and the Madman" probably deserves more than what I'm considering writing, but as for the last holidays, I'm unfortunately pressed with work deadlines these days... Ergo, no time. Long story short: the first volumes of The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), were put together with a consistent help from a retired US Army surgeon, William Chester Minor, institutionalized in a hospice in England after murdering somebody during a crisis of schizophrenic paranoia. The movie basically describes the collaboration between this man and James Murray, the lead editor of the first edition of OED, with all the context of the time, which indeed it's... let's say exotic enough, if not even unbelievable, to deserve a movie.

The story behind the movie, as some review was saying, keeping the proportions, apparently rivals a bit the story of the movie. Again, long story short: Mel Gibson + Farhad Safinia who worked together before in "Apocalypto" and are the authors of this project apparently got into a pretty serious conflict with the production studios, not being very happy with the final result, and seeming avoiding its promotion. Indeed the movie looks a bit unpolished, and probably a director's cut would make it better. It's not really comparable with what else we can find in Gibson's directorial CV + has a bit too much cliche in it, but I definitely wouldn't say it's a bad one.

As I said, it would probably deserve more discussion, but I would stick to just a couple ideas coming out from what's here. Quoting a dialogue between the shrink and the patient: "You think I'm insane?" "Are we not all, to some extent?". Mental sanity is unfortunately something that's probably relative in some proportion, and depending a lot of self management. Despite the horrible association given by placing it above the entry to Auschwitz, "arbeit macht frei" (actually stolen from French from a Swiss entomologist + psychiatrist), escape in work may be a solution for a longer term, when you really enjoy what you're doing and you see a result, but as it comes out from the movie you don't know for how long this will hold. Something certain, is that for short term, some escape from reality is recommended to keep you sane, and around 1900 one of the few variants were the books :) Fortunately now we have more options. ;)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5