“How will history remember you?” asks William Hundert, instructor of classical education at St. Benedict’s School, of his students. First, history has to remember you at all — a point Mr. Hundert (Kevin Kline) makes in his class. Unfortunately, history didn’t make much note of 2002’s The Emperor’s Club, which might have been one of the finest cinematic ruminations on virtue and ethics, in both the civic and personal senses.

The cause of that misfortune can be seen in its trailer, which casts it as more of a heartwarming coming-of-of-age comedy and an anti-establishment tale:

** Some spoilers included **

Watching the trailer, one can easily see why audiences thought this would be a retread of Dead Poets Society (which the chosen title unwisely mimics for no good reason) or perhaps Scent of a Woman, and took a pass. All three films take place in a boys-academy milieu, and this trailer suggests a similar stalwart-outsider-challenges-stuffy-authority theme. Its two predecessors delivered exactly that, taking a stand against the classical education/academy establishment to some extent, although for different reasons.

The Emperor’s Club presents a very different argument. In this film, adapted from the short story The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin, classical education and classical virtues are the protagonists. It is the outsider who turn out to be the antagonist,  only one of several as it turns out. In fact, one of the chief themes of the film as well as Canin’s short story is how the collapse of those virtues comes from within the institutions that defend them — much like the Roman republic and empire that serves as the general context of the film.

That connection is made clear by the role of the father of antagonist Sedgewick Bell (earnestly portrayed by Emile Hirsch). Hyram Bell, a populist demagogue in Canin’s text, serves in the US Senate, a clear reference to the Romans. In the trailer, we see a confrontation between Senator Bell (Harris Yulin) and Mr. Hundert. “You, sir, will not mold my son,” Sen. Bell tells Mr. Hundert, in what looks like the set-up to an anti-establishment confrontation and a victory of education over authoritarianism.  What we don’t see in that is the inevitable foreshadowing of the resolution of this conflict — the eventual corruption of the institution that defends classical values and ethics. This corruption plays out in several ways.

The erosion begins for Mr. Hundert when Sedgewick joins the school mid-term and immediately begins disrupting the discipline and virtue that St. Benedict’s represents. That demolishing of virtue becomes almost literal in a near-miss encounter at the local girl’s school, but it is more relentless and malicious in the character sense within Mr. Hundert’s Western Civ class. Sedgewick’s anti-establishment impulses aren’t at all noble, but instead entirely nihilistic and childish.

However, Mr. Hundert empathizes with Sedgewick’s situation, having had an overbearing authoritarian as a father himself. In his attempts to reach Sedgewick, Mr. Hundert begins compromising his own values to bolster Sedgewick’s self-esteem, just as Sedgewick’s character flaws begin to infect the student body — and his father’s infect the academy’s leadership. We see a gentle erosion at first, with Mr. Hundert helping Sedgewick evade rules, and then hiding out with the boys from the consequences of an accident when a man of character should have stood up. It then accelerates into grade inflation at the expense of a more deserving student, an act which has ramifications for years to come. At the same time, his headmaster refuses to take action when Sedgewick commits an act of academic fraud so audacious that it almost cannot be ignored, a failure clearly out of fear of the power of Senator Bell.

In the end, all of this turns out to be futile, because Mr. Hundert and St. Benedict’s inevitably fail to shape the boy’s character, which indeed emerges as one very similar to the father he detests. What they have done, however, is confirm in Sedgewick’s eyes that character is a pretense, a dodge to get what one wants. And that will also have ramifications for years to come, much of which occupies the last third of the film. It becomes clear that Sedgewick has always assessed Mr. Hundert as more or less a co-conspirator all along, and in a sense Mr. Hundert realizes that he’s right. Even Mr. Hundert’s two attempts at justice for Sedgewick’s cheats are themselves cheats by Mr. Hundert, a point that comes across more explicitly in The Palace Thief but is still clear in the film. To beat the barbarians at the classical gate, Mr. Hundert has to play by their rules — which means Sedgewick wins in some manner, even if it’s not a complete victory.

Rather than end with Canin’s sense of futility, the film chooses to focus on cheering on teachers and gives Mr. Hundert a sense of redemption. Even with the upbeat epilogue and a more satisfying ending for Sedgewick, though, the film still packs a punch in regard to the nihilism of anti-establishmentarianism and the erosion of classical civic and personal virtues. In its way, The Emperor’s Club foretells the decline of a republic thanks to the assault on its institutions — helped in no small part by those who are tasked with defending them. And that republic isn’t Rome.

There’s not much point assigning a rating to this film, which turns 19 this month and has been widely accessible for a long time. It features first-class production values and top-notch performances, along with a gentle touch that might have helped make this film more obscure than it should have been. If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to add it to your watchlists. To answer Mr. Hundert’s question, history should remember The Emperor’s Club more than it has thus far.

Addendum: Not entirely unrelated — a group of educators concerned about the nihilism on campuses across the country decided to do something about it:

There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education. Yale’s motto is Lux et Veritas, light and truth. Harvard proclaims: Veritas. Young men and women of Stanford are told Die Luft der Freiheit weht: The wind of freedom blows.

These are soaring words. But in these top schools, and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth—once the central purpose of a university—remains the highest virtue? Do we honestly believe that the crucial means to that end—freedom of inquiry and civil discourse—prevail when illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life?

The numbers tell the story as well as any anecdote you’ve read in the headlines or heard within your own circles. Nearly a quarter of American academics in the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. Over a third of conservative academics and PhD students say they had been threatened with disciplinary action for their views. Four out of five American PhD students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning scholars, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. …

At some future point, historians will study how we arrived at this tragic pass. And perhaps by then we will have reformed our colleges and universities, restoring them as bastions of open inquiry and civil discourse.

But we are done waiting. We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew.

I mean that quite literally.

You can learn more about the University of Austin here. I might mosey down when they get the operation up and running to take a look at it for myself — and for Hot Air readers.