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The Emperor's Club (November 24, 2002)
Films about teaching seems to follow a certain path: The teacher must help the troubled student, the school budget must be saved, or the teacher must become the student when it comes to life lessons. All these (and many more) have been used time and again. “The Emperor’s Club” is another film about education that casually follows this formula. But how can you hate motion pictures that celebrate teaching? While nobody enjoys clichés, “Emperor’s Club” is the type of familiar picture that feels comfortable enough, even if you’ve seen it all before.
The year is 1974, and William Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a prep school Classics professor who loves every moment of teaching. It has taken over his life, cutting him off from love (Embeth Davidtz, “Army Of Darkness”) and a clear understanding of what teenagers are normally like. A reminder of typical teenage bad behavior comes into his class one day in the form of Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch, “The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys”), the troubled son of a senator, who wants nothing to do with Hundert’s class. Facing up to this mighty challenge, Hundert takes Sedgewick on, and tries to turn the rowdy teen into a true scholar. But just when he feels as though he’s succeeded, Hundert find that Sedgewick has other plans for him. The results still haunt the teacher 30 years later, when the student and teacher meet again to heal their old wounds.
Based on the short story “The Palace Thief” by Ethan Canin, “The Emperor’s Club” is, as I mentioned, about as mechanical as a film can get. Riding the waves of audience pleasing moments to a rather contained whole, the film get no points for originality. What it does succeed at is heart, or better yet, the simple admission that maybe there are people out there who can never learn moral aptitude. “Emperor’s Club” is honest about the nature of men, and seeing that it is more of a character piece than a truly story-centric film, is successful in detailing painful reminders that sometimes, people don’t change.
Still, even those honest and successful sentiments are weighed down by scene after scene of clichéd boys’ school moments and classroom tomfoolery that get in the way of the overall message, and threaten to turn the film into a cartoon. There was even a point, early on in the film, when I thought, “Well, at least there wasn’t a food fight or a panty raid.”
Unfortunately, I was only right about the panty raid.
The core of “The Emperor’s Club” is the violent battle between doing what’s right for the heart and character, or just getting the job done no matter what the cost. For Kevin Kline (here reteaming with director Michael Hoffman for the third time), this seems like the only type of picture he’s made recently, and this righteous autopilot acting isn’t nearly as hungry or unsettling as his flawless work in last autumn’s “Life As A House.” Granted, nobody could own this role as much as Klein can, but his acting here isn’t nearly as demanding as I’ve come to expect from the actor. I can see the appeal of the role, and of the message, but even Klein’s most ardent supporters may not be so forgiving.
“The Emperor’s Club” is pretty soft, slow stuff, and as trying as the film can be with its writing, the messages contained within the picture are enough to see it through.
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