For Alan Bennett, history is a lot like sex. As one of the eight history students in his “History Boys” explains, it’s just “one f—ing thing after another.”

Mr. Bennett’s film, adapted from his own play, follows eight English boys as they cram for the Oxbridge entrance exams. But unlike other coming of age education stories like “Dead Poets Society” and “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” the teachers here are not only interested in the boys’ minds; two in particular compete for other things as well — Hector (Richard Griffiths), the history teacher who taught them to appreciate the process of learning, and Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), a young contract teacher brought in to help them finagle scholarships to Oxford or Cambridge.

In molding the boys for their exams, Irwin tries to move them away from reciting the truth and toward the spectacle of surprising the reader. “A question has a front door and a back door,” he tells them. “Go in the back. Or better yet, the side.”

Hector often bristles at the young teacher’s approach to education, preferring to accumulate knowledge than to use it for what he sees as malicious purposes. When one of the boys complains that he doesn’t always understand poetry, Hector responds,”I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now, and you’ll understand it … whenever.”

Hector has done an impressive job of filling the boys with information. When they’re not quoting A.E. Housman or Gracie Fields, they’re interacting in French or spouting historical insults. But Irwin dismissively relegates the wealth of information that Hector has given them into “gobbets” to be thrown around to impress the dons. And this approach has a powerful hold on the film as a whole.

When the students object to maneuvering the truth to impress professors, Irwin quickly responds, “What’s truth got to do with anything?” Similarly, the events in the film are more about fantasizing about the potential for educational titillation than making any substantial point.

Mr. Bennett was himself applying to Oxford in the 1950s, where he taught medieval history for a brief period after graduation. He has updated and rewritten his own experience into an educational fantasy of impressionable and seductive young boys coming of age in the 1980s.

The film rides the fine line between appreciation and fetishism. In his indictment of contemporary education, Hector claims that boys are drawn to the ancient universities because they are “starved for antiquity.” “The History Boys” demonstrates this hunger aesthetically, with a romantic field trip to the sparse but stunning ruins of Fountains Abbey and in the antiquities porn of Oxbridge architecture that flashes on the screen when the boys arrive on campus for their interviews.

The setting, in the hopeful and highpowered 1980s, also helps to capture the cusp of greatness that Mr. Bennett sees as a pinnacle in the lives of many young men. After the 1980s, these sorts of entrance exercises were no longer used for Oxford and Cambridge.

“The History Boys” makes its case for the period and the material with smart visual and aural tricks. Director Neil Hytner, who helmed the play as director of the National Theater in London, imbues the film with gritty appeal, filming with Super 16. The boys are shot almost exclusively in their grammar school uniforms, emphasizing their focus on education and also the seductive appeal of their youth. Wherever they go, new-wave music emphasizes their raw energy and brimming potential.

And none of the young actors disappoint. The ensemble players, who have been imported directly from the play and are therefore intimate with the material, are all impressive talents. It is a cinematic marvel to watch them joke, coddle, and prod one another and their teachers. But in his assumption that all boys tend toward homosexuality on some level, Mr. Bennett reduces the love of wisdom to a lust for the flesh and relegates the characters without male love interests to the background. Jamie Parker as Scripps gets some depth from his deep religious pursuit and Russell Tovey’s Rudge earns some screen time when he begins to reject the pursuit of higher education, but the other boys are often used for attractive and witty background banter. The impressive Frances de la Tour makes a powerful impact as the remaining history teacher, Mrs. Lintott, but it is Dominic Cooper as Dakin and Samuel Barnett as Posner who interest Mr. Bennett the most. Like Hector and Irwin, Posner pines for the unattainable Dakin, a smart but manipulative boy who seems to besot both sexes.

There is nothing to prove that Dakin is the most intelligent or interesting boy in the group. He is simply the most aware of his seductive powers, and eager to dominate, both intellectually and emotionally. But just as the characters fall for his exploitation, the storyline confuses infatuation for education.

By the epilogue — the weakest part of the film — we are meant to realize that Hector is not a sad, outmoded figure, but a truly admirable man. Also, among all of the boys who tried for scholarships that year, only Posner has taken his grammar school lessons to heart. While the other students go on to mostly dull and ordinary lives, Posner joins the noble profession of teaching. The physical attraction to young boys seems to help him in this pursuit. “I never touch the boys,” Posner says solemnly, “but it’s always a struggle.”

Mr. Bennett seems intent on making a case for wanting young boys, but the erotic pursuit overtakes all others here. He has compiled an intricate set of gobbets to impress and surprise the audience, but the result is just another exercise in manipulation. In trying to depict the educational pursuits of a group of English boys, Mr. Bennett has simply gone in the back door.

mkeane@nysun.com