This affecting story of a teacher's life is a couple of grades ahead of Dead Poets Society (which it vaguely resembles), thanks mainly to a portrayal of repressed, pent-up emotions by Kevin Kline that recalls that of Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr Chips. The film also benefits from focusing not on the master's triumphs (of which there are many) in teaching classics to his boys, but on his failure - with Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch, a Leo lookalike), the spoiled son of a senator and a disruptive influence on the class. He seems eventually to get through to the boy and over-marks one of his papers to qualify him for the prestigious 'Mr Caesar' contest. It's a big mistake. Some well-known names - Patrick Dempsey, Embeth Davidtz, Edward Herrmann - hardly get a look in here, as Kline and young Hirsch nobly carry the show. It drags a bit towards the end, then rises to a triumphant and entirely fitting finale.