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The Emperor’s Club "This is a story... without surprises," Kevin Kline intones in the wholly unnecessary voice-over narration for the movie The Emperor's Club. And he's almost 100% correct. This is a film whose lessons are announced early on, in sage declarations handed down to students by Kline's character, Professor William Hundert, a sage, well-mannered professor of Western Civilisation. All along the way, the professor is there to tell us, either indirectly or by way of narration, the lessons to be learned from this story. The filmmakers certainly mean well. They underline important virtues and seem to care deeply about a good education and the need for good father/son, teacher/student relationships. But this is illustrated in broad strokes, with a lot of talk and very little revelatory action. The film's dependence on spoken platitudes and clichés makes it a prime example of art's principle rule: Show, don't tell. The Emperor’s Club is the latest in the "Honor Thy Teacher" genre, in which Dead Poet's Society is coming to be remembered as a classic. It is a difficult story to tell artfully. It is all too tempting to give the teacher speeches that deliver morals to the story. This may sound nice to an audience, but it excuses them from thinking for themselves, rather like giving a class the answers to a test rather than making them work for it. Mr. Holland's Opus failed in similar ways, making us think we were watching an smart film when, instead, we were watching a movie about smart people that was crafted with all the subtlety of a Hallmark card. So many platitudes are delivered within the first fifteen minutes, it becomes wearisome:
Similarly, the boys of Hundert's class do not take on distinct personalities as they did in Dead Poet's. Each has his affectation: one stammers nervously, one blindly adheres to the rules, one is Indian and thus has an accent. (Of course, the one minority representative is a model student... a very safe decision.) St. Benedict’s School for Boys is a boys school that looks like all the other boys schools we've seen at the movies, and yet is somehow less interesting, less haunted, less beautiful. Even Harry Potter's school for boy wizards is more believably detailed, populated as it is by distinct characters and professors with personality. The students come from rich and influential families, but they all seem comfortable, laughing on cue, studying dutifully, obeying with precision so the audience will be unable to miss it when a REBEL arrives. Only the rebel, who is himself far too conventional and predictable as rebels go, makes an impression. This obnoxious meddler is a senator's son named Sedgewick Bell. He is identified as a rebel by A) talking back in class, B) playing pranks, C) having a rich and powerful father, and D)... of course... introducing the other boys to pornography. (Another calling card for rebels. It happened in Dead Poet's as well.) It's as though Bell bought the K-Mart kit for Boys School Rebels. I was a bit relieved that The Rebel at least raised the issue of the opposite sex. The film get positively uncomfortable whenever the subject of women comes up. Robin Williams's character in Dead Poet's Society frowned on reckless misbehavior, but he approved of passion. He struck a delicate balance between action and responsibility. In The Emperor's Club, things are more black and white. You either resist any kind of intimacy with the opposite sex, confining yourself to mannered, Victorian exchanges, or you plunge into pornography and skinny-dipping with bad girls. Sure, Sedgewick is a womanizer in the making, but Hundert is painfully prudish and a bore. When he is tempted by a beautiful friend (Embeth Davidtz) whose marriage has gone cold, he virtuously resists, but in the most stodgy, distancing, clenched-jaw kind of manner. The poor woman... faced with either a neglectful husband or the tin man. A moment of tenderness or sympathy would seem beyond the bounds of propriety to Mr. Hundert. (The movie goes on to reward his stodgy reserve.) Halfway through the film, I felt as though I was trapped in a long and perfunctory day of boarding school while outside the sun was shining and people were living their lives. I at least would have preferred to be transferred down the hall to Robin Williams's class, so I could listen to a teacher with vim, vigor, humor, and passion. The disappointing shallowness and predictability of scene after scene is a real shame. There were some confrontations with real potential here. Exploring the dynamics of Sedgewick's upbringing, or the specifics of his personal wounds, could have been quite revealing. Examining why his father the Senator is such a hard-hearted devil could have given this story the "dust" of realism. Unfortunately, we're left with a cookie-cutter "Daddy doesn't love me" lesson. Hundert himself might have an interesting past. And his final confrontation with one of the "villains" ends with a man actually saying that anybody who wants to be somebody had to lie and cheat and steal. I waited for long deep laugh of the maniacal villain to follow... this is the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons. The only pleasant surprise of the movie for me was that Hundert's vow to Sedgewick of "I believe in you" results in only a temporary impact in the young devil's life. I had expected the film's sentimental leanings would show the boy fully transformed. This seemed to me like the beginnings of restraint, probably a credit to Ethan Canin, who wrote the short story, instead of the filmmaker. That is what ultimately saves the film from complete disaster in the end... a small element of reality. Things don't turn out beautifully in the end. Hundert does not become a bestselling author, nor does he have that "Touched by an Angel" ability to heal hearts broken beyond his capacity to repair. I am relieved by what this film does not do. But I am wholly unmoved and un-entertained by what it does do. I am sure the film will have a few critics raving. One critic has already written, "This is a wonderful film to generate discussion. Is virtue really its own reward? What if it stands in the way of our own advancement? In what ways do we rationalize white lies, compromises and lapses of integrity?" I agree that good insight could be found in a discussion of this film's themes, just as good discussion can come out of an after-school special. But that is because they are good themes, not because of this film's artistry. While it does trumpet good virtues and offer good lessons, it does so without grit, passion, or originality. It announces those lessons to us, even forecasts them, rather than letting us work it out for ourselves. Thus, it gives us the pleasure of agreeing with things we already know, rather than the pleasure of instead of re-discovering truths in a new light. When watching a movie, I prefer the thrill of discovery over the agony of pious instruction. Jeffrey Overstreet 9/9/2002
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