What a teacher, a father figure, and a forgotten man can teach us about manhood.
Last night I watched one of the better films I have seen in a long time. Mr. Burton, a biopic of Richard Burton, the celebrated Welsh actor who starred in Becket (1964) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), was directed by Marc Evans and stars Toby Jones as Philip Burton and Harry Lawtey as Richard Burton. It came out in 2025 with little fanfare, but it is a masterpiece.
I do not usually automatically write a movie review for every film I think is worth attention, but this one stood out to me for a few reasons. In our day, when generational conflict is so pervasive, Mr. Burton tells the true story of a teacher/student relationship that became a father/son relationship. It does not shy away from the damage done by dysfunction or the difficulties of adoption, but it does show that it is possible to both show and receive the love between a father and son, even when circumstances do not favor it from the initial stages of life.
It also carries with it the weight of a Christian moral background, taking place in Wales during and following World War II. It has been a while since I have seen a film outside the golden era of Hollywood that exudes a kind of providence and hope despite chaos and trial. Wales is still one of the more Christianized regions of the United Kingdom, and that spirit, although not overt, animates the film like a ghost in the background.
Richard Jenkins
The story follows Richard Walter Jenkins, who grew up in Pontrhydyfen, a small mining village in the Afan Valley of South Wales. In 1942, the sixteen-year-old Jenkins was attending Port Talbot Grammar School when he came under the tutelage of Philip Burton, an English teacher who quickly recognized the young man’s talents. What begins as a teacher and student relationship becomes the central relationship of the film, and eventually something much more significant.
Up until that point, Jenkins had lived with his older sister Cis and her family because his mother had died when he was two years old and his father, Dic Jenkins, was a heavy drinker who was unable to provide a stable home for him. There is a scene in the film where his brother-in-law, Elfed, suggests that Richard needs to leave school and go to work if he wants to continue living in their home. Richard does not want to leave school, so he goes looking for his father in a pub. His father seems genuinely happy that his son has come to see him, but when Richard attempts to come home with him, his father shuts the door in his face.
The rest of the film shows this pattern repeating itself. Richard wants love from his father, and this drives him to find it in other places, even when he does not seem to realize what is at work in his own heart. His relationship with Philip Burton begins professionally. Richard temporarily leaves school to work, but Philip recognizes that his intellectual and dramatic interests have not disappeared. Richard continues his reading, particularly his fascination with Shakespeare and the stage, and Philip begins to take his development seriously.
The Unloved Son
Richard eventually becomes involved in the theatrical work surrounding the YMCA, where he begins making his first stage performances. Philip takes an increasingly personal interest in his development, tutoring him, disciplining him, and helping him see possibilities for his life that he could not see for himself. Richard is not simply a difficult boy with an interesting voice. He is a young man with remarkable gifts who desperately needs someone to teach him how to use them.
Eventually, Philip Burton invites Richard to live with him and helps provide for him. He also begins preparing him for a future on the London stage and for university. This is where Richard has to make a decision about whether he wants to be adopted. Philip presents the adoption as something of a formality, a way of avoiding the public controversy surrounding the unconventional arrangement of a student living with his teacher. It would also give Richard a new name and greater opportunities.
Richard goes to his father, Dic, and asks him to sign the adoption papers, only to discover that his father expects money for doing so. The film portrays Philip paying fifty pounds for Richard’s signature. Whether or not that happened exactly as depicted, the emotional point of the scene is clear. Richard is heartbroken by his father’s cavalier attitude toward the whole affair. In fact, he seems almost to want his father to reject the paperwork and take him back as his rightful son. Instead, Richard is rejected in one of the worst possible ways. He seeks consolation with a girlfriend and, more significantly, with the bottle.
The Stand-In Father
There is another internal battle, and perhaps the more important one of the film because it centers on its hero: Philip Burton’s difficulty in expressing fatherly acceptance of Richard. Richard is not his biological son, even when their legal relationship changes. He is, in Philip’s mind, still a student. But both of them know that it has gone beyond that. Many men have trouble expressing what they feel toward their sons and fathers, even in ordinary family settings. How much more difficult would that be in a relationship as unconventional as theirs?
I will spare the audience any more spoilers, but the film does show, toward the end, that both adopted father and son learn to express their true love for one another. And it is a masculine picture. It is not Hallmark, cheap, or feminized.
Mr. Burton is a Story About Men
It is good for us to be reminded of real-life stories that elevate true sacrifice and love, especially when those qualities are embodied in a father figure. Fathers have been so mistreated in media for decades that it is a breath of fresh air to see a masculine figure, one who is truly masculine, take center stage.
Philip Burton is not depicted as the muscular macho man. He is simply a teacher who took a student in need under his tutelage, taught him discipline, and gave him a place to belong. Frankly, we need more heroes like him. They are the men who keep society functioning through their selfless devotion to the forgotten members of it. He did what Richard Burton’s father would not do in his own selfishness. He gave Richard what his father could not give him: discipline, opportunity, encouragement, and eventually his own name.
The Real Hero
Most importantly, the providence of Mr. Burton is found in the fact that Richard Burton is not really the hero of the story. The hero is someone you have probably never heard of. He is someone from a little place known only to God and to a few others until now. The glamour of public celebrity is exposed for the weakness it can cover up as Richard Burton ascends the ranks of acting, carrying more than a drinking problem behind the scenes. Meanwhile, the importance of stalwart encouragement and private strength, located in Philip Burton, becomes the glue that holds the whole enterprise together.
Life is filled with Philip Burtons. Men who never get the credit, who do not seek the glory, who do not live for themselves, but on whose backs much of our Christian-infused civilization depends. They are the nameless ones whose children do great things, whose tomorrows are bright because they themselves sacrificed their own tomorrows so that it could be that way.
It is often the one who kicked the goal who gets the attention when the assist is at least just as important, and without it there would have been no goal to be kicked. In this story, the man making the assist happens to be middle-aged, without an impressive physique, with no name in lights, and with no family of his own except the ones he cultivated through his own giving. Films rarely focus on that man, and when they do, it is often not to make him look good. But in this case, the usual narrative of toxic masculinity is set aside to showcase something far better: what a man should and ought to be.
May we follow this kind of example.
