This DVD item from Universal Studios was reviewed on 22-Mar-2009. The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) Reference DVD. Classifications : General Drama Genres DVD Video Haunted by the Past By Theme Drama Genres DVD Video Psychological Drama By Theme Drama Genres DVD Video School Days By Theme Drama Genres DVD Video Period Piece Drama Ge . Click the following link to view the cover of The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition). Related topics: 2002-11-22. General. Drama. Genres. DVD. Video. Haunted by the Past. By Theme. Drama. Genres. DVD. requestid: 5782d684-4ce4-410c-a6c5-49f807c2ae57
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1) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. For some reason, Classics and Ancient History teachers are the ones who are always set up for moral epiphanies in these movies (eg. "The Browning Version"). This fact has more to do with our sentimentalized view of the Classics and Ancient History, and our culture´s supposition that teachers of these arcane subjects can´t help but be moral naifs.
Nevertheless, Kline´s strong performance carries the movie and his character´s epiphany is earned. Superior to the treacly "Dead Poet´s Society." I enjoyed this movie very much.¤ 2) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. There cannot be any remake of the "Dead Poets Society". There cannot be any remake of "The Changing of the Guard" from the Twilight Zone. So why try? And this film is a remake of the two I have just quoted and maybe a few more. The only new element is to introduce in that elite Ivy League prep school a cheater as the main central student character. Nothing new really either, I mean cheating in those institutions is part of the job, part of the fun, part of the game and to be taken is not only a risk it is a pleasure. So, what can make this film worth making first and worth seeing second? Not much but one thing though. The fact that the teacher, the real main character, actually cheats to help a cheater access the competition he does not deserve accessing and the teacher discovers only after the competition that the chap was a cheater, which he did not know before. He confronts him in their mutual disappointment, mutual and reciprocal. But not disappointed entirely for the same reasons. The teacher because he cheated in the grading, hence he cheated another student who probably deserved the reward better than the recipient of the cheated grade. The cheater because he could not go through and lost anyway. But there is worse than that after all. The teacher realizes the student is cheating before the end of the competition and he tells the school´s principal discretely and that one tells him to forget about it, to ignore it, which he does not do entirely, though he does it for everyone who is watching and is unaware of the cheating. He just changes the questions and looks for one that is not purely factual but that requires some wider knowledge and he fails the cheater like that. But the film is vicious somewhere because twenty-five years later or so, the same student, now grown up, married and the father of two sons, requires a repeat of the competition with a full class reunion in order to provide the school with a great grant to build a new library dedicated to his own dead father. But he wants the teacher to be there and preside on the ceremony. And it is a full repeat and we know from the very start it is going to be using modern technology of course. So, the interest is about the attitude of the teacher when he realizes he is being cheated, and how is he going to react in order to fail the cheater, and how is he going to confront him with the truth? That you will have to find out by yourselves. The punishment will be harsh on the teacher who will have to come to terms with his conscience about cheating on the grading, cheating one student in favor of another one, come to terms and make amends. The punishment will be even harsher for the cheater who will be confronted to no public scandal, he who wants to be a senator, but to a private and lasting knowledge that will run in his family for generations and will always classify him as a cheater, and no matter what he may say and think, that stain is hard to remove and to forget. But the subsequent real ending is sentimental and has little interest. In fact it is a double ending which makes it even more sentimental. The question that floats on top of all that is why? Why did the teacher not give the proper grade to that student who was going to reveal himself as being a cheater? Is it because that student was rowdy and difficult, because he had insinuated that he, the teacher, liked little boys, or because his father had told the teacher that he had to do his job, i.e. teaching, and not meddle with molding the child? Probably a little of the three: to prove he could bring the child on the right track, to prove to himself he was not hurt by the sexual insinuation and to prove to himself he could mold the child even without the agreement of his senator of a father. And he failed them all: the child was a cheater and not a success, he did not prove anything to anyone about his sexuality that remained unsatisfactory and totally clandestine, no matter what it may have been, and he did not mold the student since that student would do it again twenty five years later in front of his own wife and children. A complete failure. Maybe not quite a complete failure thanks to the two sentimental endings, but that is pure compensation, no real success. For the details get the film and watch it. You cannot foresee the second and last ending at all.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
¤ 3) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. A prep school teacher who teaches ancient Greek and Roman history
is told about and his failure with a son of a rich and powerful man.
A long term lesion is taught...¤ 4) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. It´s so hard to say why I do not like this film without giving away the plot. The teacher was honored at the end of the day, which is good. But he made some bad decisions along the way in the name of hope for his students. And those decisions came back to kick him in the pants. The moral of this story seemed to be, he lived his life sort of right and it sort of came out ok in the end. Dead Poets Society was a much better film than this.¤ 5) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. Although there are some holes in the script, I love this movie. The performance by the flat-bellied Kevin Kline, a fastidiously erudite teacher at St. Benedict´s boarding school of high repute is a memorable one indeed. I teach at a school resembling this, although not of such an elitist brand.
(Did he always need to wear suspenders, rather than a belt?)
First the drawbacks. The professor of ancient history would be the very last to spot technological gadgetry. But here he does before anyone else. No, one of my great teachers, William Jones of the University of New Hampshire, who taught similar subjects, couldn´t even use a laser pointer. So, please. Also, the Romans were a particularly brutal people, inspiring Jesus to rebel against them. They were so, what, crass and brutal that the central idea that teaching character by teaching their history is an arguable one. The Greeks, too, though espousing a marvelous philosophy, practiced the execrable policy of child exposure, something even the luminous Aristotle defended by dubious argument. And the boys caught skinny dipping. They were in a canoe, and aged nuns were coming. Here´s what would have happened: they would have hightailed it out of there!
But for those caveats, Kevin Kline rocks. He dresses fastidiously, writes magnificently on the blackboard, and is utterly believable as an eminently decent man whose vocation is teaching.
The side stories of a sycophantic colleague who upstages him professionally is played very well by Rob Morrow. And his love interest is done sparingly and wonderfully. I wish I knew the actress´s name. She announces she´s leaving for Oxford with her husband. Eyes tear up. It´s obvious the two love one another. And at the dissolution of her marriage, she comes to marry her true love. Completely secondary, but it does just enough to flesh out the character.
One of the features I most liked was the portrayal of politicians as people who are essentially sociopathic. Sedgwick Bell, the son of a West Virginian US senator, is portrayed as such a one, though very charismatic, as is often the case. In giving him a grade of an A+, when he deserved an A-, the scriptural message was obviated. That is that poor people--or rich ones--should not be judged favorably on that account alone. By advancing so far, Bell had "entered the light." Kline´s character didn´t want to cause him to regress; he wanted to reward him for all his recent effort. The professor (he was more than a teacher) thus gave in to his understandable instincts to reward Bell. But so doing, justice was violated, and a boy who was more deserving was pushed aside for competition in the Mr. Julius Caesar contest that´s a hallmark of St. Benedict´s.
That boy would ultimately become the man who had imbibed the lessons, moral and pedagogical, that St. Benedict´s ultimately was established for.
Benedict is the Latin for Baruch, "blessing" in Hebrew. And the blessing at the end is a touching one indeed. I think you will be blessed by seeing the movie.¤ 6) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. Powerful and inspiring story about the meaning of honor the price of virtue and the belief that in everyones life there is that one person who makes all the difference Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 06/21/2005 Starring: Kevin Kline Rob Morrow Run time: 110 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Michael Hoffman¤ 7) DVD DVD The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios. Comparisons to Dead Poets Society are inevitable, but The Emperor´s Club achieves a rich identity all its own. In the honorable tradition of great teacher dramas like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Kevin Kline is well cast as Mr. Hundert, longtime teacher of classics and assistant headmaster of St. Benedict´s Academy for Boys. There he encounters a defiant student and senator´s son (Emile Hirsch) who desperately needs--but ultimately rejects--Hundert´s lessons on leadership, integrity, and the shaping of character. Adapted from Ethan Canin´s short story "The Palace Thief," the film is conventional to a fault, its flashback structure unfolding in Hollywood shorthand. But its noble sentiments remain potently intact, allowing Kline a performance of great emotional nuance while imparting lessons of universal value. "This is a story with no surprises," as Hundert says, but The Emperor´s Club may surprise you with its admirable portrait of a life well lived. --Jeff Shannon¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 19-Apr-2009, 0783278098025192274022, 686-886-526-22B-OCB-R4B-TCB-8 
The Emperor's Club (Widescreen Edition), DVD, Image © Universal Studios
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