Dead Poets Society

Based on scriptwriter, Tom Schulman’s life at the Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Dead Poets Society was released in June 1989. Starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles, Gale Hansen, Norman Lloyd and Kurtwood Smith, it grossed over $230 million and won the award for Best Original Screenplay. Williams was also nominated for Best Actor, Director Peter Weir was nominated for Best Director and the film was nominated for Best Picture, but lost to Driving Miss Daisy.

In 1959, Welton Academy hired John Keating (Williams) as the new English teacher for the upcoming school year. Inspiring his students to go against the flow and be themselves, he makes poetry cool and rebellious. A group of his students (Leonard, Hawke, Charles, Hansen, James Waterston and Allelon Ruggiero) also form a group called the Dead Poets Society, sneaking out at night to read poetry in a secluded cave.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw this film, in the middle of my sophomore year high school English class at the beginning of a unit on poetry. I enjoyed it back then and I always watch at least some of it when I come across it on TV. Dead Poets Society is one of Williams’ best acted films with him alongside a great cast, incredible writing and good cinematography.

Ebert said Williams spoiled the film by occasionally veering into his comedic persona. He failed to understand the character. While Keating did have his comedic moments, they diverted from his mostly serious and instructive persona. In other words, Williams made him into a normal person who liked to insert a little humor into a serious lesson. Furthermore, the moments where he’s seriously teaching completely overshadow those comedic moments, especially during the whole improvised poetry scene with one of his students calling Walt Whitman a “sweaty-toothed madman.”

The above scene might also be one of the best scenes in the entire film in regards to the writing and cinematography as well. The lines from the improvised poem and the spinning camera do really well in cementing the scene as a lesson Keating gives the student in really seizing the moment and living out his first lesson of carpe diem. The final shot is also perfect, with the students standing in solidarity on their desks. It shows that Keating’s lesson of seeing the world differently, being themselves and going against the flow did get through to them and that they will act it out.

That brings forth the message of the film, which, yes, it’s blatant and whacks the viewer upside the head. But it’s one of those films that’s so well made, the viewer doesn’t care they were just assaulted with a heavy idea.

Dead Poets Society is a great film and definitely one of Williams’ best.