''The Higher Mortals'' is a film produced by the Children's Film Unit in 1993, directed by Colin Finbow and distributed by

Channel Four Films Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing many films made in the United Kingdom. The company's first production was '' Walter'', directed by ...

. It was filmed in south Suffolk and north

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

, and received its sole TV transmission on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

on 25 September 1994, also being shown at the 1994

Edinburgh International Film Festival The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is a film festival that runs for two weeks in June each year. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival. EIFF presents both UK and international films (all ti ...

. It deals with the problems suffered by many smaller girls' boarding schools during the early 1990s recession, and makes use of metaphor and analogy in its critique of the John Major government of the day. It notably features early appearances by the now prominent actresses

Jemima Rooper Jemima Rooper (born 24 October 1981) is a British actress. Having started as a child actress in television series, she has appeared in numerous film and theatre roles. Background Born in Hammersmith, London, Rooper is the daughter of TV journ ...

and

Clemency Burton-Hill Clemency Margaret Greatrex Burton-Hill (born 1981) is an English broadcaster, author, novelist, journalist and violinist. In her early career she also worked as an actress. In January 2020 she suffered an AVM brain haemorrhage and underwent eme ...

Plot synopsis

Crabbe College is a lesser-known girls' boarding school (described at one point as "a little family school founded in the 1950s by a woman who was potty about

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

") which (like a considerable number of real schools of that ilk at the time, many of which closed) is suffering serious financial problems following the recession. The headmistress, Miss Thorogood (played by Susannah York) announces that some girls "and some boys" from deprived

inner city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...

areas will be coming to the school, as part of a plan by the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...

to help struggling private schools while simultaneously giving it justification for its cutbacks of social services in deprived areas. "The Higher Mortals", while also alluding to the general assumed social position of those already at the school, specifically refers to a secret society founded by some of the girls, based around social elitism and a particular veneration of

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

. The inner-city children - four boys, Jason, Wayne, Clint, and Ryan, and one girl, Hayley (whose mother had committed suicide) arrive at the school and are, for the most part, viewed with hostility and a general lack of understanding. It is implied that the boys are at the school due to an error in social services, with Miss Thorogood commenting that she is not even sure they have the same inner-city children they were intended to have. There is some hostility towards one of the boys, Ryan, on the grounds that he is

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

, with one teacher (the reactionary Mr Bowles, played by Richard Kane) describing him as a "black bastard", after he deliberately smashes a window during a detention he is serving for stealing the aforementioned teacher's car. There is an incident of joyriding, and it is revealed that at least one of the boys cannot read. A mood of uncertainty seems to run through the school as the summer term goes on, and it is made clear that the school's financial situation is more serious than it is willing to make public. One of the inner-city children, Clint (played by Glen Mead) seems to blend into the school environment (he is seen reading right-wing newspapers such as '' The Sun'', ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' and the '' Daily Mail'') and is little heard from in the film's later stages. However, the other inner-city children develop a plot to burn the school down, which they trick some of the girls into participating in. On the day that education secretary Mrs Fry (who somewhat resembles the then government minister

Virginia Bottomley Virginia Hilda Brunette Maxwell Bottomley, Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, (née Garnett, born 12 March 1948) is a British Conservative Party politician, and headhunter. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons from 1984 ...

) arrives to speak at the school's Speech Day, she is kidnapped by the inner-city children and tells them, incorrectly, that she will announce that the scheme of sending inner-city children to Crabbe College was a pointless waste of time and that the school was outmoded anyway. At Speech Day, Mrs Fry actually says that it had been a great success, had secured the school's future and had justified the government's cutbacks in public funding. At this point, the plot to burn the school down (using

petrol Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic c ...

among other things) is put into action. In a powerful sequence, the headmistress is seen talking about "this still undeniably great country" as part of the school is already in flames. Jason and Wayne are both killed in their getaway car after Jason, well versed in chemistry, hands his brother a cigarette to light while Wayne's hands are still covered in petrol. The film ends with Vicky saying that Crabbe College had been so badly damaged that it was closed down, with its pupils going to other schools. She herself had transferred to the comprehensive school that Hayley had come from, and she concludes by commenting that "I learnt that prize day that there could be no poetry for Jason and Wayne, and that ideals such as ours in the Higher Mortals had almost been abandoned. My education had begun."

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Higher Mortals, The 1993 films British children's films 1990s English-language films 1990s British films