Let me explain to all of you why this movie sucks.
1. It's grossly naive.
2. It's culturally chauvinist to the point that it's offensive.
3. It's based on ideas about how history works, and how people work, that are antiquated and ignorant.
4. Every line in this movie is a cliché or sappy or both.
5. Kline's character is a repressive (and repressed) authoritarian figure who refuses to let his students express themselves or experience life in any way, yet the film expects us to take his side throughout.
6. Goddamnit people need to stop making such crappy movies.
This movie is predicated on the idea that there are such things as great people, whose names and dates will be indelibly incised into history, and not-great people, who will be forgotten. The emperors of Rome were great, today's corrupt politicians are not, and it's the job of high school teachers everywhere to mold the rotten youth of today back into classical-era heroes. The naiveté here is so thick it's like being smacked in the face. The fact of the matter is, statesmen two thousand years ago, along with philosophers, teachers, and the rest, were no less driven by self-interest than their counterparts today. They lied, stole, killed, raped, supported bigotry, neglected duties, broke laws, made unjust laws, insulted each other, betrayed each other, and committed all the trivial and nontrivial day to day cruelties that are a part of the human experience. Yes, cultural pressures were different then, but it wasn't a utopia by any stretch of the imagination, and people were just as flawed as they are today.
Kline's character, a teacher has a quote on the wall of his classroom by some ruler from the 12th century b.c. who boasts about conquering some place that no longer exists. His name is not remembered by history, Kline tells his students, because, though he conquered, he didn't contribute anything to humanity. He was not a great person, whereas Socrates and Julias Caesar were. Quite to the contrary, we know of important Greeak and Roman figures not at all because they were great in some abstract sense, but precisely because the Romans, who valued and preserved Greek culture, were far and away the dominant political power in Europe and the Middle East for hundreds of years, up until Medieval times. It is because of that dominance that their art and history survive, and that they were pedestalized by the elite classes of the people who came after them. We remember them because they were conquerers. The author of Kline's plaque is forgotten not because he was any less great than Julias Caesar, but because he was worse at establishing lasting empires.
The result of this movie's ignorant mistaking of the morally arbitrary machinations of political power throughout history and the chance changes in how history is retold that come with cultural shifts for an ideal system that preserves true greatness and filters out everything else is that the movie is pretty much culturally bigoted. In other words, according to the movie only Europeans from Greco-Roman antiquity, and possibly American founding fathers, can be great people. Yes, Greco-Roman antiquity is the subject Kline's character teaches and he would primarily take examples from it, but he basically defines greatness as belonging to that specific culture, that to be great you must be like the people of that culture, and the implication is that people from cultures that the great Greek and Roman leaders conquered are not only not remembered because they lost, but also because they're not worth remembering. Similarly, people from other places altogether, whose cultures don't conform to Greco-Roman standards, are inferior and not worth mentioning. Kline's character never cites historical figures from ancient China or Mexico or India or Mali or anywhere else in the world, and if you've seen the movie, can you honestly imagine him ever thinking it was worth his time to even learn their names? As viewers, this movie asks us to embrace what Kline embraces, to join him in his love of the greatness of our culture's heritage, and implicitly, to join him in disregarding the rest of the cultures of the world.
Finally, this movie is basically just goofy. So this guy has one mediocre student. I'm sorry, but that's not going to do it for me. If his student was really having problems, the was real kids often do, then maybe that would be a bit more compelling. But this kid is just "bad" because he isn't studious, he tries to have fun, and he thinks about girls sometimes. Cry me a river. The truth is, he's right in a lot of ways: when his friends are adults, they'll be a lot more happier that they snuck off one day and rowed to the girls' school across the lake and had an actual life experience than that they once memorized the names and dates of some Roman emperors (which, from what we see, is basically the extent of what Kline's character actually teaches).
Basically, this film is not only crushingly sappy and not compelling, it's wrongheaded and a bit offensive too. And all you people who like it have bad taste and should stop reviewing things online; you might mislead someone.
1. It's grossly naive.
2. It's culturally chauvinist to the point that it's offensive.
3. It's based on ideas about how history works, and how people work, that are antiquated and ignorant.
4. Every line in this movie is a cliché or sappy or both.
5. Kline's character is a repressive (and repressed) authoritarian figure who refuses to let his students express themselves or experience life in any way, yet the film expects us to take his side throughout.
6. Goddamnit people need to stop making such crappy movies.
This movie is predicated on the idea that there are such things as great people, whose names and dates will be indelibly incised into history, and not-great people, who will be forgotten. The emperors of Rome were great, today's corrupt politicians are not, and it's the job of high school teachers everywhere to mold the rotten youth of today back into classical-era heroes. The naiveté here is so thick it's like being smacked in the face. The fact of the matter is, statesmen two thousand years ago, along with philosophers, teachers, and the rest, were no less driven by self-interest than their counterparts today. They lied, stole, killed, raped, supported bigotry, neglected duties, broke laws, made unjust laws, insulted each other, betrayed each other, and committed all the trivial and nontrivial day to day cruelties that are a part of the human experience. Yes, cultural pressures were different then, but it wasn't a utopia by any stretch of the imagination, and people were just as flawed as they are today.
Kline's character, a teacher has a quote on the wall of his classroom by some ruler from the 12th century b.c. who boasts about conquering some place that no longer exists. His name is not remembered by history, Kline tells his students, because, though he conquered, he didn't contribute anything to humanity. He was not a great person, whereas Socrates and Julias Caesar were. Quite to the contrary, we know of important Greeak and Roman figures not at all because they were great in some abstract sense, but precisely because the Romans, who valued and preserved Greek culture, were far and away the dominant political power in Europe and the Middle East for hundreds of years, up until Medieval times. It is because of that dominance that their art and history survive, and that they were pedestalized by the elite classes of the people who came after them. We remember them because they were conquerers. The author of Kline's plaque is forgotten not because he was any less great than Julias Caesar, but because he was worse at establishing lasting empires.
The result of this movie's ignorant mistaking of the morally arbitrary machinations of political power throughout history and the chance changes in how history is retold that come with cultural shifts for an ideal system that preserves true greatness and filters out everything else is that the movie is pretty much culturally bigoted. In other words, according to the movie only Europeans from Greco-Roman antiquity, and possibly American founding fathers, can be great people. Yes, Greco-Roman antiquity is the subject Kline's character teaches and he would primarily take examples from it, but he basically defines greatness as belonging to that specific culture, that to be great you must be like the people of that culture, and the implication is that people from cultures that the great Greek and Roman leaders conquered are not only not remembered because they lost, but also because they're not worth remembering. Similarly, people from other places altogether, whose cultures don't conform to Greco-Roman standards, are inferior and not worth mentioning. Kline's character never cites historical figures from ancient China or Mexico or India or Mali or anywhere else in the world, and if you've seen the movie, can you honestly imagine him ever thinking it was worth his time to even learn their names? As viewers, this movie asks us to embrace what Kline embraces, to join him in his love of the greatness of our culture's heritage, and implicitly, to join him in disregarding the rest of the cultures of the world.
Finally, this movie is basically just goofy. So this guy has one mediocre student. I'm sorry, but that's not going to do it for me. If his student was really having problems, the was real kids often do, then maybe that would be a bit more compelling. But this kid is just "bad" because he isn't studious, he tries to have fun, and he thinks about girls sometimes. Cry me a river. The truth is, he's right in a lot of ways: when his friends are adults, they'll be a lot more happier that they snuck off one day and rowed to the girls' school across the lake and had an actual life experience than that they once memorized the names and dates of some Roman emperors (which, from what we see, is basically the extent of what Kline's character actually teaches).
Basically, this film is not only crushingly sappy and not compelling, it's wrongheaded and a bit offensive too. And all you people who like it have bad taste and should stop reviewing things online; you might mislead someone.