A duo and a dictionary

The professor: graying and groomed beard, clear-eyed, loving husband and father, purpose-driven. The doctor: scraggly beard; often wild-eyed; plagued by terrible memories, hallucinations, and guilt. The two men’s parallel stories—unlikely, yet true—merge in 1870s London during an endeavor to create the first-ever Oxford English Dictionary.

The Professor and the Madman, a 2019 film available on streaming platforms, isn’t a simple recap of historical events, but a deep, emotional drama elevating God’s grace, mercy, and redemption in the lives of complex characters. It also uses language in profound and often humorous ways. If you love a good story with heroic yet flawed characters, it’ll draw you in. If you appreciate the play and precision of English words, you’ll get an added bonus.

James Murray (Mel Gibson) is a Scottish autodidact—a self-taught professor accomplished in over 20 languages and dialects who delights in words, their meanings, and their origins. Because Oxford University’s academic delegation is desperate to create a complete lexicon of the English language after 20 years of failure, its members grudgingly accept the unlettered, unconventional Murray to spearhead a new effort. Murray’s enthusiasm is unbounded, but he first wants his wife’s support: “If I’m to fashion a book, I’ll need a spine.” She inspires and strengthens him.

The movie opens by introducing Dr. William Minor (Sean Penn), a retired surgeon in the American Civil War who flees to England, believing a murderous army deserter is after him. In his delusions, Minor shoots and kills the wrong man and is sentenced to an asylum for the criminally insane.

When Murray enlists volunteers all over England to contribute words and quotations to his etymology research, Minor joins the quest from his asylum room. With passionate saneness, he gleans words and phrases from books lining his walls, contributing more than 10,000 entries for the dictionary.

Murray finally meets Minor on the deceptively serene asylum grounds. Seeing his shackles, Murray realizes Minor is not a doctor there, but a patient, yet still befriends him.

Despite his madness, Minor evokes sympathy and admiration. He frees an asylum guard from a crushing gate. He bequeaths all his goods to his victim’s wife and teaches her to read. Yet, like Inspector Javert of Les Misérables, his tormented soul cannot grasp the concept of grace. His struggle leads to disturbing moments involving self-punishment and a torturous treatment by the asylum’s superintendent, earning the film its R rating. Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there.

An unusual tale masterfully filmed, the movie’s conversations and dimensional relationships make it memorable. You may even find yourself looking up words like assythment.