The Professor and the Madman

This is the best effort I've seen from Sean Penn since "Milk" almost twelve years ago. His portrayal of the schizophrenic William Chester Minor who, having spent almost 40 years of his life in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, became one of the single most significant contributors to the orginal Oxford Dictionary of English is superb. He captures the flaws of this paranoid etymologist warts and all, and gels very well with Mel Gibson who, as the compiler of the tome - Dr. James Murray - also turns in a good, strong and, latterly, sympathetic and understanding performance too. This is essentially a double-hander with Natalie Dormer, Eddie Marsan and Steve Coogan helping to explain the story and releasing some of the emotional steam from time to time. It's a little slow in places, two hours could have done justice to this interesting story which seems overly padded at time. As you'd expect; it looks great with plenty of serious attention to detail and it also shines a little light on Victorian/Edwardian attitudes to mental illness.