Review

Culture

Education

7 September 2023

6 min read

Back to school on the big screen

It’s back to school for many. Yaroslav Walker picks his favourite films capturing the friendship, the drama, and the expectation of school life and beyond.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

School students walk across a playground confidently talking and laughing with us

The History Boys.

BBC Films.

The summer is coming to an end, the last BBQ embers are sputtering to sleep, the weather…appears not to have been told, at least in London! Sweltering! Most importantly of all, our children are back to school, nursery or college. In light of this momentous time of year here are my top five back to school film choices, one each for the last five decades, and some honourable mentions.

1970s - American Grafitti

A teenage couple dressed in 1950s clothes sit on a kerb in deep conversation.

Charles Martin Smith and Candy Clark in American Graffiti

American Graffiti isn’t just a lovely piece of nostalgia now, it was back then. A misty-eyed look back at 60s Americana, this film is packed with slicked-back hair, classic cars, diners with roller-skating waitresses, and the complexities of teenage romance. Four friends meet on the last day of summer to experience the joys of a California evening one last time before two of them jet off to college ‘back East’. Curt is unsure about his future and is even considering staying in his hometown. Steve is hubristically thrilled about the prospect of fleeing his humdrum life and even shedding his loving girlfriend for new conquests. Terry is insecure and simply desperate to prove he is as good as everyone else, and Milner is the older friend who never left town and is a local-legend drag-racer. Over the course of a long night they go their separate ways, have adventures, and finally find some closure to their ongoing anxieties: one finds new confidence, another begins to take risks, another learns to be happy with his lot, and Milner wins a drag race…oh, an learns the genuine happiness that can be found in adult responsibility. It's too long, but it is a lovely atmosphere to meander about in, and is edited superbly so it never really drags. With superb performances and a soundtrack bursting with 50s and 60s hits, this is well worth a watch.

1980s - The Breakfast Club

Five glum students perch on stools in school room.

Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club.

Well what else could it have been!? In many ways the film set the classic pattern of US High School living (which did and sometimes still does inform UK attitudes) and the High School movie. John Hughes didn’t invent these archetypes and wasn’t the first to put them on celluloid, but he was the master of crystallising them. The Breakfast Club presents an all-day detention that just so happens to have a representative from every social caste of the High School system: Andrew the jock (Emelio Esteves), Brian the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), Allison the weirdo (Ally Sheedy), Claire the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), and Bender the burnout (Judd Nelson). These five kids have nothing in common but their dislike of the domineering Vice-Principal (Paul Gleason was born for this role!)…OR DO THEY!? Whereas American Graffiti explored the process of maturing into adulthood and the taking charge of one’s sense of self (with a background hum of Vietnam paranoia and the end of golden Americana days), The Breakfast Club is much more forthright in demonstrating just how difficult being a teenager is. These kids don’t need help ‘growing up’, if anything they need to be allowed to be kids. Over the course of the day their defences break down and they learn that each of them has expectations and pressures that seem overwhelming, and grown to have genuine respect and compassion for each other. A script that is sometimes on-the-nose and prone to soliloquy is saved by the sheer bravura of the performances. A go to comfort film, that will always be iconic. Any film which ends with Simple Minds is a 5 star affair for me.

1990s - The Faculty

Two students walk down a school corridor, one looking away.

Elijah Wood and Jordana Brewster in The Faculty.

We move to slightly scarier fare with the 90s. The Faculty asks the question you were all asking…what if Invasion of the Bodysnatchers took place in an American high school? The answer is subtext; a lot of subtext and allegory. You know, when you’re a teenager, everything can seem quite tough. The world can seem like it's against you. It can seem like everyone you know has changed overnight and you’re lost in a sea of hostile faces. It can seem like a parasitic alien is using your school as a beachhead for a planetary takeover. The Faculty is cinematic junk-food and unapologetically so. It is camp and silly and fun. It takes those Hughesian archetypes, puts them on steroids, and then throws them into a plot joyfully riffing on the most classic sci-fi and horror tropes - all held nicely together with a quip-filled Kevin Williamson screenplay. An underrated Robert Rodriguez directorial effort which shows that he can work well across genres, and an excellent opportunity to see early performances from Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, and…wait…is that Usher in that film!?

2000s - The History Boys

Yes, we move to British shores at last. Alan Bennett’s stage-play is brought to beautiful cinematic life by original director Nicholas Hytner, who has an excellent track record of translating Bennett’s work from stage to screen. It’s another flash of nostalgia (which all such films are, as adult writers and directors look back to their own school days and teenage angst and adventure) which transports the viewer to 1980s Sheffield. A group of friends at the local Grammar School have all done very well in their A Levels and are now put to the task of preparing for the Oxford entrance exams. All are lovers of History (well, maybe not Rudge) and have received an enviously eclectic education in the full gamut of culture from the eccentric and long-suffering Hector. Like all the films above, The History Boys explores the challenges of adolescence, but with a specific focus on ‘doing well’ in a particularly British way. Sporting excellence or popularity aren’t the measure of student success - Oxbridge is. The teachers don’t push the young men nearly as much as they do themselves, seeing a place at Oxford as the best form of advancement. The witty and moving script also touches on the issue of infatuation, attraction, sexual fluidity, and chaste reciprocity: Posner’s love for Dakin being encouraged only so far in some sort of mutually agreed stand-off, Dakin’s willingness to sleep with the substitute teacher Irwin, and (of course) Hector’s tradition of giving the boys a ride home on his motorcycle and…appreciating them aesthetically. Not easy subject matter, but written and directed and shot and performed with such sensitivity that you can’t help but fall in love with every character.

2010s - The Inbetweeners Movie

Two students look at each in in incomprehension.

Blake Harrison and Simon Bird in The Inbetweeners.

We end with crudity. Crudity and friendship and a booze-filled week in Crete. Lovers of the TV show (I was one) - which explored the trials and tribulations of four unpopular, unremarkable, and unfortunate teens at a British comprehensive school- were well served by this upgrade. TV comedies, like plays, rarely translate well; The Inbetweeners Movie is an honourable exception. Will, Simon, Jay, and Neil have come to the end of their school days and decide that they need one final hurrah before they go their separate ways. The proceeding 90 minutes is a torrent of drunken antics, foul-mouthed discourse, and crass toilet humour, all threaded together by hapless and fruitless sexual intrigue. 90 mins of that might seem like it would wear thin, but The Inbetweeners Movie is too kind-hearted to go stale (unlike its successor which was a genuinely squalid and unpleasant affair which had me questioning humanity). The four young men are so pathetic in the true sense of the word, that you can’t help but cheer for them. The overall message of friendship as a virtue that transcends the ups-and-downs of life give the salty humour a sweet edge. For a certain generation - mine - this might be the definitive British school movie.

Honourable Mentions

Grease

Sort of like American Graffiti…but better. I’m talking Travolta, I’m talking Newton-John, I’m talking songs that are bullet-proof! Graffiti is on the official list because it speaks to the many cultural and political undercurrents of the time…but Grease is so much more fun. If you can only see one of the two, see Grease!

Gregory’s Girl

Pipped by Breakfast because of the archetypes and Simple Minds, but probably one of the finest British rom-coms ever!

Mean Girls

Obviously. It's so fetch!

Review

Art

Awe and wonder

Culture

16 July 2025

5 min read

This gallery refresh adds drama to the story of art

Rehanging the Sainsbury Wing revives the emotion of great art

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

An art gallery arch reveals a suspended crucifix and other paintings in a distant room

The Sainsbury Wing interior.

The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery has recently reopened after closure for two years for building works. There was controversy over the designs for the Sainsbury Wing in the planning stage but its use, once built, to tell the story of the early stages in the development of Western art was widely welcomed and appreciated.

The story that it told is essentially the story of Christian art and so the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing together with the rehanging of the National Gallery’s collection provides an opportunity to review that story. As a result of the completed work over 1,000 works of art - a larger proportion of the collection than has been previously displayed - trace the development of painting in the Western European tradition from the 13th to the 20th centuries from beloved favourites to paintings never previously seen in the National Gallery.

The Sainsbury Wing features works from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Painting came of age during this time. It moved from manuscript illumination to images on panel and canvas, overtaking metalwork, tapestry and sculpture as the most popular and prestigious art form in Europe.

An opening room contains works from the 14th to the 16th centuries, including The Wilton Diptych and Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks, which together ask visitors to consider the full spectrum of what painting can do. This introductory room gives a sense of what these paintings were for and how they were used. Painting’s rise in status was due to all the things it can do such as tell complex stories, convey human emotions, fool the eye, capture a likeness, make viewers laugh, weep, pray and think. This room provides a sample of those achievements and the various functions painting fulfilled.

Throughout the Sainsbury Wing, new display cases are used to show paintings as objects viewed from all sides, not simply as flat panels on walls. Medieval altarpieces often had winged panels that could be opened or closed depending on the season or occasion. An example is included here to show how such hinged panels were used.

From this introductory room spanning the period, visitors can follow either a Northern European route or Italian route around the space, enabling influences between both to be highlighted. The key change explored on both routes is that artists in this period began to create a convincing illusion of reality in their paintings.

The earliest paintings in the National Gallery Collection were made in central Italy nearly 800 years ago. These naturalistic and intimate images of love, grief and suffering responded to a new interest in the humanity of Christ. A chapel-like space is entirely dedicated to Piero della Francesca whose work, with its cool colour palette and keen sense of space and light, possesses a dignified solemnity. Another room focuses on the spiritual power of gold-ground scenes of devotion, exploring the way gold in paintings was used to evoke the timeless, spiritual significance of Christ, the Virgin and saints, and set these holy figures apart from our world.

The galleries in the Sainsbury Wing were designed to evoke, for visitors, a Renaissance Basilica. Its architectural features make it possible to display paintings in a similar way to how they would have originally been encountered. The central galleries form the nave of the basilica and all the altarpieces displayed are now there. These galleries are devoted to works made in Florence, Venice, and Siena. The early Florentine room represents the principal point of departure for this new art. In the Venetian room we see the development of perspective, while the Siena room resembles a side chapel in the basilica.

An altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence by Jacopo di Cione and his workshop has been reconstructed and sits on an altar-like plinth to evoke the view of it originally seen by worshippers. Predella panels by Fra Angelico are displayed in a case in front of this altarpiece giving an indication of the way in which predellas interacted with a larger, grander altarpiece. The positioning of these two works also illustrates the movement in terms of realism found in the paintings of this period. The Ascension scene on the altarpiece depicts a statue-like ascended Christ while Fra Angelico’s resurrected Christ in the predella is more realistically floating in the air.

In a first for the National Gallery, Segna di Bonaventura’s Crucifix is visible down the central spine of the Sainsbury Wing, suspended from the ceiling. This enables today’s audiences to view the work in the way it would have been seen in the 14th century. Painted crucifixes were common in 13th- and 14th-century Italian churches, often displayed high-up like this one. Rood screens on which such crucifixes were originally placed were often destroyed in the Counter Reformation, which led to crucifix’s then being hung from the ceiling, as is the case here.

The rehang also presents several works back on display after long-term conservation projects. The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Piero del Pollaiuolo is back on show after nearly three years of conservation and scientific examination.

The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before.

Despite the religious and political upheaval caused by the Reformation, the arts also flourished in Northern Europe during this time. Prints transformed the exchange of artistic ideas. Christians were encouraged to use images as a focus for meditation on the lives of Christ and the saints and paintings that were meant to be handled and examined close-up were created for the private devotion of members of religious orders and laypeople. Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach were key figures, with Dürer’s prints, portraits, altarpieces and non-religious subjects transforming painting both in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond.

Christianity became the predominant power shaping European culture after classical antiquity, inspiring artists and patrons to evoke the nature of sacred mysteries in visual terms. The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before and with stories flowing across panels in colourful scenes. These displays also promote a greater understanding of how works of art were, and still are, used as models of moral behaviour, as celebrations of the deeds of holy figures or as a plea for one’s hopes, both in this life and in the afterlife.

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