Part I The film tells the story of a private college where
Professor Hundert creates the "Emperor''s Club" to study the greek-roman
culture history. The master tries to shape students personality, using
the good history characters'' examples. The immaculate teacher''s
character goes into shock when he faces the conceited student Sedgewick
Bell, son of a scrupulousless Senator. The conflict happens due to Bell
keeping a relationship with his father in which the dialog didn''t
exist, as well as caress and affection, even if the boy tried to get
closer. In that challenge, the professor ends up, dishonestly, forging
a contest rating (Emperor''s Club), diverting from his upright character
to try and get closer to the boy and pass him his concepts.
Understanding that, regardless of few steps forward, he cannot change
the student''s character, the professor goes through an internal
conflict about what are victories and defeats. That conflict gets
deeper when he gets disappointed by understanding that even amongst
school masters, "brightness" overlaps uprightness and honesty. When he
gets his chance to reach the highest position, he''s postponed as
director and the choice falls on someone younger than him and that had
as main ability to gather money to support the college. All that shows
us that human being will always be imperfect. The lack of character and
dishonesty exist everywhere and even people that always follow those
principles can, at one time or the other, to have a slip. There is the
need, as human beings, of renewing ourselves everyday. As we wake up in
the morning, we need to reaffirm our vows of character uprightness,
justice and fidelity to our principles.
We can conclude that, how good
the school or teacher is, the character and personality are shaped from
birth, given by our families and along the life, the means however may
interfere, what actually stays are the examples, good or bad, that we
get from our parents.
Part II "Nobody is born
made. We make ourselves little by little, in the social practice that
we''re part of." (Paulo Freire) How do you understand that sentence,
with the information passed by the film? As we grow, our surrounding
environment passes us information that shapes our personality. Family
plays a fundamental role in that perfectioning, only school does not
have the strength to change, alone, the human being''s character.
Part III Professor Hundert
sees in the student great intelligence, despite the arrogance and lack
of character and tries to pass good principles so that he can become
conscious. However, his paternal is much stronger and Bell can''t adapt
to the new concepts, preferring victory at any cost, even if cheating.
Nevertheless, there were finantial interests from the school part,
which led to the discretion of some students'' slips whose fathers could
contribute with big amounts of money.