M, 124 minutes
3 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
Inspirational teachers enjoy a well-deserved niche at the movies. To Sir, With Love with Sidney Poitier was a landmark in the sixties, while The Teacher Who Promised the Sea is a recent entry in Spanish-language. The late Robin Williams was unforgettable as one of these special, brilliantly motivational people in Dead Poets Society.
While Mr Burton charts the success of a teacher who was indispensable to the development of one of the great movie stars, it also reveals the early life of an actor who seemed destined for the same life as his alcoholic father, a rough Welsh coal miner. The hardship Richard Burton endured in his early life may come as a shock, but it also serves as an insight into the destructive personal struggles in his later life, when it seemed he had everything.
A classic film about an inspirational teacher, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, was running in cinemas in 1939, around the time that 17-year-old Richard Burton (Harry Lawtey) was nearing his last year at school in a mining town in Wales. Life with his beloved elder sister Cis (Aimee Ffion-Edwards) would be alright, were it not for her coalminer husband Elfed (Aneurin Barnard) who had no interest in letting him finish his schooling. However, his gifted literature teacher, who also delved in theatre and radio, somehow saw the potential that his sulky, wilful student had to be a great actor. And the rest is history.
Insights into the personal struggles the public saw in Burton’s later life
Philip Burton (Toby Jones) assumed guardianship of the young man, Richard Jenkins, who then adopted his name. Their mentoring relationship became as close as father and son, with Richard able to finish his schooling, consider a place a university, and make his way through rounds of auditions until he triumphed on stage in Shakespeare’s Henry IV at Stratford-Upon-Avon in the early 1950s.
It was a truly remarkable transformation. There had been so many obstacles to a life beyond Port Talbot, let alone to achieving international success on stage and screen. Richard was the 12th of 13 children, had lost his mother at the age of two and seemed destined to follow in the footsteps of his father, Dic (Steffan Rodhri), a pugnacious coal miner who spent his time outside the pits at the pub downing pints. How could young Richard imagine a future beyond the daily grind? The answer is, of course, through the arts.
Mr Burton is a Welsh production. It is told as a period drama, modestly mounted with impeccable historical detail, effectively capturing the ambience of gloomy mid-century Welsh mining towns and the kind of characters that that they produced.
What makes a great actor, is always a question worth asking
In this modest, well-meaning story directed by Marc Hyams and based on a screenplay written by Josh Hyams and Tom Bullough, we leave off at the start of Richard Burton’s brilliant career. A little abruptly, perhaps, even though his life and career were soon to become public property.
Before the final fade, there is no hint at all of the glamorous world in which he would become a famous player, critically acclaimed and able to command a huge fee for his Hollywood performances. And then there was the uniquely beautiful actor he married, twice, Elizabeth Taylor.
What makes a great actor? It is always a question worth asking. Richard Burton’s teacher had his work cut out. The accent would need modulating, and the anger and frustration would need tempering, but how did he come by that special something with which an actor makes a connection with audiences? This touching tale of success against the odds at least reveals the vulnerability that can lie behind mesmerising performance.
First published by the Canberra Times on 17 August 2025. Also published on Rotten Tomatoes