Movies into Film
The Emperor’s Club
Directed by Michael Hoffman
USA, 2002
CHEATING LESSONS
Kline and Hirsch (Photo: Universal Pictures)
On the day I attended an advance screening of The Emperor's Club, newspaper headlines shouted "Iraq Resolution Passed" and "House, Senate, back Bush." Given that this film chronicles a pedigreed wastrel who barely maintains a C average in prep school, gets accepted to Yale with his Senator father's influence and, as the film ends, appears poised on the brink of a political career of his own, I'm unable to shake the parallels to our current President.
Whatever subtext the filmmakers intend, their movie most definitely arrives at the right moment. I wish timing were everything because in spite of bringing up an urgent and impassioned conversation on ethics, the film (based on Ethan Canin's novella The Palace Thief) isn’t consistently powerful. Sadly, much of it is trite; worse still, screenwriter Neil Tolkin and director Michael Hoffman present triteness as if it were gushing insight into human nature.
Kevin Kline plays Hundert, a devoted teacher of Greek and Roman antiquity at an elite boys’ school in the mid-1970s. Hundert's universe is a well-ordered one, and a brash, belligerent new student named Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch) ushers in upheaval. Sedgewick radically deconstructs Julius Caesar, distributes porn among his classmates,and scores low on the first exam. Kline: "I gave you a one for spelling your name right." Ultimately, in hopes of inspiring this underachiever, Hundert takes Sedgewick under his wing, gives the boy benefit of the doubt. He does so at a cost of short-changing more gifted pupils, a personal and professional blunder that dogs him for life.
The Emperor’s Club (Universal Pictures)
Kline is exceptionally good; he gets right inside Hundert's calm disgust. The other actors, alas, don’t have as much to work with—they’re all portraying cardboard props. As Kline’s romantic interest, Embeth Davidtz looks lovely and speaks bewitchingly about Greek ruins, yet the movie asks nothing of her. Jesse Eisenberg, impressive as Campbell Scott’s nephew in Roger Dodger, is just a face in the crowd here.
As the film’s pivotal character and launcher of moral dilemmas, the 17-year-old Hirsch disappoints. I don’t think it’s his fault. He's all souped-up to act, except that Tolkin’s script paints Sedgewick as such a standard issue bad-boy all Hirsch has left to do is embody stock clichés. Earlier this year, Hirsch made a brilliant big-screen debut in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, a perceptive, right on target, and hugely entertaining movie that not enough people have seen. That film—also set at a boys’ school—captured how teenagers move and speak with keenly observed accuracy; Emperor’s Club, despite its fixation on highly principled truth, panders to a sitcom trash aesthetic.
And on that note, stand warned that this major-studio endeavor comes complete with built-in reactions. They take the form of swooshing violins and whining woodwinds, relentless orchestrations that clog nearly every scene (the director doesn't trust you to feel emotion without muzak). – NPT
October 2002
Movies into Film
© N.P. Thompson, 2004
npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com