Archive for November, 2002

One of the things you’ll learn from Kevin Kline’s new film, The Emperor’s Club, is that it’s really okay for middle-aged men to cry at the drop of a hat in pub­lic. Their man­hood will not be ques­tioned. It’s not a corny script inven­tion; this stuff hap­pens in real life. Tears freely flow like a hur­ri­cane pum­mel­ing the Louisiana coun­try­side and you may be left ask­ing your­self, “What in the hell are they cry­ing for?” By the end of it I was cry­ing too… out of boredom.

The nor­mally invig­o­rat­ing Kevin Kline plays William Hun­dert, a by-the-book pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics at St. Bene­dicts School for Boys. Lec­tures focus on the works of Aris­to­tle, Socrates and other ancient writ­ers and philoso­phers. Inter­est­ing when dis­cussing schol­arly top­ics, Hun­dert is pri­vately dull. Unmar­ried and lonely, he rows daily on the lake near the school for exer­cise. He is engag­ing in class yet dull and dis­tant in per­sonal rela­tion­ships and he seems to think that that’s just fine. Kline, I sup­pose, given the script, plays Hun­dert expertly here, but the man is so life­less that it seems that Kline just phones in the role of a zom­bie. It’s a pity because he’s a great actor and could have made Hundert’s dull char­ac­ter far more interesting.

Hun­dert hosts a yearly con­test at St. Bene­dicts’ known as “The Mr. Julius Cae­sar” con­test. The top Clas­sics stu­dents at the school square off in a Jeopardy!-like set­ting answer­ing minu­tia regard­ing the ancient world. The film’s con­flict arises when one of the con­tes­tants attempts to cheat and Hun­dert catches him in the act. It will become a life­long obses­sion of the cheater to rec­tify his blem­ished record through any aca­d­e­mic means necessary.

T his film is sup­posed to answer the big ques­tions like, “should a man be allowed to suc­ceed through dis­hon­esty?” but it came off as preachy and aloof. Why should we care about William Hun­dert? His char­ac­ter seems con­ceited and self right­eous. Is it rea­son enough to care about what hap­pens to Hun­dert sim­ply because he’s an hon­est man? And if I don’t what does that say about me as a per­son? Does that make me a dis­hon­est schmuck or just crit­i­cal of this film? Should I even attempt to care since the film makes even that so dif­fi­cult to do?

Kline, who’s work I’ve admired going on 15 years, does not shine in this film. The role of Hun­dert seems like a role that Oscar-whore Kevin Spacey would have con­sid­ered and then declined with a sneer. “There just isn’t much to work with,” he might say, and strangely enough I would agree with him. What passes for sub­stance here is lit­tle more than grown men cry­ing about lost oppor­tu­ni­ties and their inno­cent days of school.  Kline’s per­for­mance, and the whole film for that mat­ter seem more suited to the likes of a movie-of-the-week on a second-rate net­work rather than a fea­ture film.

Can one have a rudi­men­tary under­stand­ing of sci­ence and still appre­ci­ate a James Bond pic­ture? It’s been pretty well dis­cred­ited that 1) a woman sprayed with gold paint over her entire body would die, 2) two peo­ple could have sex very eas­ily in a space shut­tle and 3) Ice­land is a float­ing glac­ier. In fact it’s quite green, but never mind that fact, because 007 films never really deal with real­ity. But is that so wrong? In this case, no, it’s not, and it makes for a grand time.

It all comes down to the point that Bond is fun, not seri­ous or real­is­tic, and it wouldn’t take a genius to fig­ure that out. James Bond is Super­man with­out super pow­ers, and there­fore some­one men can eas­ily relate to. He’s gets to play with guns and elec­tron­ics, he beds many beau­ti­ful women, and he always wins regard­less of the odds against him. What man would not want this life?

Every­one knows who James Bond is, so what’s the point of dis­cussing char­ac­ter? The Bond fran­chise is all sit­u­a­tion and periph­ery char­ac­ters at this point in the game any­way, and that sit­u­a­tion involves North Korea , dou­ble agents and as many dou­ble enten­dres as can fit into 123 min­utes of screen time. Our story begins in North Korea where Bond is attempt­ing to pur­chase weaponry from sol­diers using dia­monds that just hap­pen to have a bomb hid­den with them. Tipped off, the North Kore­ans cap­ture him after a pro­tracted open­ing sequence with explo­sions so big that you might mis­take it for a pre­emp­tive nuclear strike. Bond knows there is a trai­tor who set him up and he spends the rest of the film try­ing to find that per­son and stop a war between North and South Korea .

Die Another Day is the fourth out­ing for Pierce Bros­nan, and by this point in the series he has the Bond per­sona down as well as Con­nery did in his hey­day. He is relaxed and witty, mak­ing even the dumb­est sound­ing lines roll off his tongue as if he were per­form­ing Shake­speare. Gun­play is sec­ond nature to the man at this point. He isn’t as cool as Con­nery was, but he is bet­ter than either Roger Moore, George Lazenby or Tim­o­thy Dalton.

Here the plot is some­what sec­ondary to the some­times silly action tak­ing place on the screen. And then the biggest Bond fan will not care if it makes log­i­cal sense, but will have ques­tions such as Are the explo­sions big enough? What types of cool new gad­gets does he get to play with? What sex­u­al­ized names will the women in the film have? How many times will some­one wait to kill an enemy, thereby allow­ing long fight sequences? All of these ques­tions are points in an out­line that Bond fans have come to rec­og­nize and smile at know­ingly as they take place.
This year marks the 40 th anniver­sary of the James Bond film fran­chise, the most prof­itable in British film his­tory. Is it high art? Could it win Best Pic­ture? Who the hell am I kid­ding? The answer is obvi­ous, but for 40 years the col­lab­o­ra­tors on this mam­moth series have pounded out answers to the above ques­tions that keep the audi­ences cheer­ing for more.