Emperor’s Club

Posted on January 13th, 2005 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance. What will your contribution be? How will history remember you?

A great teacher has little external history to record. His life goes over into other lives. These men are pillars in the intimate structure of our schools. They are more essential than its stones or beams, and they will continue to be a kindling force and a revealing power in our lives.

The end depends upon the beginning.

After a wait of many years, I was finally able to watch The Emperor’s Club today. I, like many others, am drawn to the boarding school stories - both of film an books. Harry Potter, The Chocolate War, Dead Poets Society, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips come to mind. So much time has gone between when this movie first came out and when I saw it, that I forgot all that I had heard about it. I simply remembered that I wanted to see it, but had forgotten why.

About half an hour into the movie, I though to myself, “I know what’s going to happen. This is going to be another inspirational teacher/student movie with a cheesy crescendo ending.” But not too much farther into the movie, I realised how wrong I was.

Mr. Hundert (played exceptionally by Kevin Kline) is a teacher of the classics at a boy’s boarding school. He seeks to instill in his students a sense of duty, honor, and virtue. The main event of the movie is the Mr. Julius Caesar contest, in which the three top students in Hundert’s class, go head to head in front of the whole school answering questions about ancient Rome. Last man standing wins the honor of being “Mr. Julius Caesar.”

Early on in the movie, Sedgewick Bell appears. He is the son of a senator, a bit of a smart alec, and completely charismatic. He draws the other students into his schemes and whims. He is above the system. Above virtue. Above rules. He gets what he wants and through whatever means his Macchiavellian mind can construe.

The interaction between Sedgewick and Hundert is understandable at the beginning of the movie. As a fellow educator, I can understand the challenge and the thrill of seeing a student who could become so much and only needs a prod in the right direction. I watched the movie as Sedgewick suddenly seemed to make a change and began studying hard - but my skeptical mind thought, “Yeah, right. No student changes overnight like that.” And my thoughts proved to be true.

Hundert becomes drawn into Sedgewick’s web, much like the other students. He wants Sedgewick to do well. He wants him to become great. So he compromises ethically to give him a chance to prove himself. The top three students make it to the Mr. Julius Casear competition. Hundert changed Sedgewick’s grade to allow him to be in that competition, pushing out a qualified student named Martin Blythe. During the competition it becomes very apparent that Sedgewick is cheating, yet nothing is done about it. And Hundert cannot truly bring himself to be disgusted with Sedgewick as he is aware that he himself had in a way cheated also.

The movie halfway jumps 25 years, and we meet up with the boys again as men of the world - and leaders. They restage the contest, and the same thing happens. Sedgewick again cheats.

Hundert feels like as a teacher, he failed. His student failed him, and thus he himself failed.

Yet near the end, there is a ray of hope. The student who he had blocked from entering in the competition at the very end, appears to give Mr. Hundert another chance. He brings his son to the school and enters him into his care. Martin Blythe exhibited all the vitues that Hundert was looking for in Sedgewick, yet didn’t recognize because he was drawn to wanting Sedgewick to become great. But Martin still believed that Mr. Hundert was a great teacher, depsite his failings. Hundert confessed to him at the end that he should have been in the contest, and Martin Blythe does not become bitter, but instead, offers Mr. Hundert another chance by entrusting his son to his teaching.

There is not a cheesy, happy ending. Instead, you are left in thought. Sedgewick ends the movie as a very successful man on his way to becoming a senator. Here’s what Hundert narrates at that point:

I had come here in the hope I had been wrong about Sedgewick Bell, or rather that I had been right. Right to believe in him all those years ago. But this is a story without suprises. As a student of history, I could be shocked neither by his audacity nor his success. I had failed Sedgewick. But the worth of a life is not determined by a single failure or a solitary success. My other students taught me that. However much we stumble, it is a teacher’s burden always to hope that with learning a boy’s character might be changed, and so a destiny of a man.

This movie reminded me how we are all sinners, both youth and adults. It reminded me of how we tend to instill great truths into our children, and act around them as if we contain these truths ourselves, yet they can see right through us to the lies our behavior spells. It reminded me of the need for a Savior, not just for the young and foolish, but for the old and foolish as well. It reminded me that what we need to be more about teaching our children (and ourselves) the worth of Jesus and less about obedience and ethics and virtue with no foundation.

If you like thoughtful movies, I’d give this one a try.

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