The Professor And The Madman

The Professor And The Madman Official Trailer
Transmission Films

I vaguely remember hearing about Daniel Webster, no that's wrong, it was Noah Webster and his dictionary back in, what, elementary school? Webster first published his dictionary in 1828. Over in England, Samuel Johnson published the first modern dictionary in 1755, first modern English dictionary anyway. Don't know about them furrin' devils.

This movie is about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1874 and while it's a true story, or as true as any true story ever is, it is pert near unbelievable.

Sean Penn plays W. C. Minor, a captain / surgeon from the United States Army, suffering from paranoia and hallucinations who shoots down an innocent man in London and kills him. He is judged insane and therefor not guilty and so is locked up in the Broadmoor insane asylum. Nicest insane asylum I've ever seen. Was it that nice because Britain was devoting a substantial portion of it's wealth to caring for the insane, or was it that only a small fraction of the lunatics got locked up? I suspect the later.

Anyway, he gets involved in James Murray's (Mel Gibson) crowdsourcing project to track down the origins of every stinking word in the English language using their 'inter-netted' means of transmitting messages: the postal service.

I was surprised to see Mel back on the big screen, er, in a full scale Hollywood production. I thought he had alienated Hollywood a few years ago. But maybe this wasn't a Hollywood production. He's come a long way from Mad Max.

On Netflix, just over two hours long.

P.S. The best part of this movie was showing the enormous amount of work that went into producing the dictionary. The next best part is its testament to the mental abilities of the two title characters. It is pretty darn amazing what people can do when they put their minds to it. The story about the lives of the people involved just emphasizes how great an accomplishment this was.