Given everything that reportedly happened behind the scenes, it really is surprising that The Professor and the Madman holds up as an even halfway watchable productionīeyond the performances, however, the narrative buckles - perhaps due to the mismanaged production, but perhaps also because it's just plain impossible to translate this kind of epic project into a compelling movie. Amazon's pick up and distribution marks the UK bow for the feature, which is actually remarkably watchable considering everything going on behind the scenes which should arguably have prevented it from being so. As a result, the feature, which was shot in 2016, ended up shelved for years, and then unceremoniously dumped - Snowpiercer-style - on VOD and streaming services. Originally intending to not only star in it, but also direct the piece, he handed over directorial reins to his Apocalypto screenwriter, Farhad Safinia, but the production was fraught with woes from the start, running over schedule and over budget, and all culminating in a legal clash that ultimately saw Gibson and Safinia take the matter to court to try and stop the production studios from finishing and releasing the incomplete film without them. Gibson purchased the rights to the Simon Winchester book 'The Surgeon of Crowthorne' (dubbed The Professor and the Madman in its US release) as far back as 1999, hoping to adapt the biographical tale of the birth of the OED, and the unusual men that fought so hard to bring it to life.

Amazon picks up the messy, shot-in-2016 film whose tale of the impossible task of bringing the Oxford English Dictionary into existence is ironically mirrored by the film's own 20 years of production woes. 'Simon Winchester could not have told it better. Beautifully told and awe-inspiring' Daily Mail 'A weird and wonderful story of an eccentric friendship, and a slice of history' Sunday Times Minor, a millionaire and American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand of those words.īut when the committee insisted on honouring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr.

As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. The compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. An extraordinary tale of madness, genius and obsession, discover the true story of the two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary - and literary history!

The surgeon of crowthorne review