The Professor and the Madman

The Professor and the Madman (2019) is a historical drama you can watch online on iFILM. In Victorian England, Oxford scholar James Murray takes on a task that looks impossible: compiling the first complete dictionary of the English language.

There are too many words and far too little help. Then the entries start arriving from an unlikely source — Broadmoor, an asylum for the criminally insane. Dr. William Minor, an American army surgeon who shot an innocent man during a delusion, sends Murray thousands of quotation slips. An odd friendship grows between the lexicographer and the prisoner, split by the wall of a cell. Mel Gibson and Sean Penn play two obsessives bound by a love of words. Natalie Dormer, Eddie Marsan and Steve Coogan round out the cast.

Directed by Farhad Safinia from Simon Winchester's book, the film traces the true story behind the Oxford English Dictionary — a study of guilt, redemption and the strange order that one broken mind can build. Stream The Professor and the Madman (2019) online on iFILM.