The Professor and the Madman (2019)

"When I read, no one is after me."

This is, while not entirely without verging into sentiment at times, an extraordinary film. The real life events it depicts are themselves extraordinary, of course: Dr James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, strikes up an extraordinary friendship with Dr William Minor- surgeon, veteran of the Union Army, erudite gentleman, paranoid schizophrenic and murderer- as Minor makes an enormous scholarly contribution.

Those facts alone are remarkable, and remain so in fictionalised form. But the film has more to it than that- the snobbery endured by Murray, of humble origins in the Scottish Borders; the tension between being with one's family and working to provide for them; the treatment of personality disorders; love; justice; friendship. Most of all it deals with the huge theme of redemption, with a sensitively written  and performed subplot in which the widow of the murdered man slowly comes to forgive and indeed love Minor.

The emotional depths, which are profound although excessively sentimental at times, are helped by a nicely structured script and outstanding performances from Sean Penn and Natalie Dormer, That wanker Laurence Fox is sadly in it but, happily, he plays a very hissable baddie.

This is well worth watching and, without a doubt, the finest film featuring a man cutting off his own penis I have ever seen.