Stean Penn And Mel Gibson they are acting together for the first time in the film The professor and the madmanairing tonight on Channel 5 at 21.20. The story is from the book The most educated assassin in the world (1998) by Simon Winchester which refers to the life of the author of theOxford English Dictionary.
Initially the 2019 film was to be directed by the same Mel Gibsonbut due to legal issues the production was delayed for two years and the actor of Lethal Weapon lost the case against Voltage Pictures. Gibson however remained in the project in which he plays the title role, the Professor James Murray.
The professor and the madman: the plot
The Professor and the Madman is set in England in 1879 and tells the true story of Scottish professor James Murray (Mel Gibson), to whom the task was conferred by Oxford University Press to work on the first Oxford English Dictionary to the world. Murray had to collect all the words in the English language with their etymology, meaning and related examples. The idea was to involve ordinary people by inviting them to mail as many words as possible.
Mel Gibson and Sean Penn. (Eagle Pictures)
The titanic and almost crazy undertaking proceeds in fits and starts and it seems that Murray is unable to support the amount of work, until a certain WC Minor intervenes to support him (Sean Penn), a professor in Broadmoor Asylum. Years earlier Minor, after serving as a medic in the US Army during the Civil War, was caught by hallucinations and killed an innocent man by mistake. The man, having become aware of Murray’s project, begins to send letters with hundreds of words, concretely helping him to realize the first Oxford English Dictionary.
The meeting between the professor (Mel Gibson) and the madman (Sean Penn)
Murrayafter long exchanges of letters, decides to meet and get to know William Chester Minor. The two become friends, but the professor does not reveal to the Oxford commission and his wife who the man really is. The first edition of the dictionary is publishedwhich however does not collect the favor of some members of the Philological Society of London, due to its incompleteness. The situation escalates when it is discovered that Minor is a mental patient locked up in an asylum. Murray will do everything to protect and defend his friend considered “crazy”.
In addition to focusing on the relationship between the two and the success of a monumental undertaking, the Professor and the madman also follows the parallel story of the widow Eliza Merrett (Natalie Dormerthe Margaery Tyrrell de Game of thrones), to which Minor slew the husband mistaking him for her imaginary persecutor. Because of that murder, due to his post-traumatic paranoia, he was locked up in a mental hospital. Eliza was left alone with six dependent children.
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