David Wukitsch

The movie loosely based on the 1998 book is beautifully shot and convincingly portrays the massive undertaking needed to create the Oxford dictionary. Gibson is terrific as Murray the primary author and Penn overacts the contributing psychotic. To liven the plot the film adds a far fetched romance (Penn and the wife of his murder victim). I took away a number of themes—the sacrifice of creative genius, academic backbiting stifling progress, and most of all the pervasive mystery of serious mental illness and how little we really know about it almost 150 years after the time period depicted in the film. It is refreshing to see a film that doesn’t need to bow to the current wave of political correctness.