[9]
Robin Williams headlines this period drama from Australian auteur Peter Weir (Witness, Picnic at Hanging Rock) centered around teen boys coming of age at a late 1950s New England prep school. Williams plays Professor Keating, their inspirational English teacher, whose unorthodox teachings stir passion and encourage self-expression at a school founded on disciplined conformity. A group of boys reform the ‘Dead Poets Society’, a secret cabal Keating was part of many years earlier. At their clandestine forest gatherings, the boys encourage each other to take chances, to express themselves, and to ‘suck the marrow out of life’. After one boy (Robert Sean Leonard) feels trapped between his newfound passion for the arts and his overly-strict father’s future intentions for him, he takes his own life. The headmaster promises an investigation, ultimately forcing the ‘Dead Poets’ to implicate Professor Keating’s teachings as the cause for the tragedy, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Despite its box office success and multiple Oscar nominations (including a win for Tom Schulman’s original screenplay), critics of Dead Poets Society largely seem to point to the unlikeliness of a teacher like Keating ever truly inspiring their students. I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t have teachers like this, because I personally had many. I never would have become a filmmaker or a storyteller without them. My parents weren’t nearly as strict as the adversarial father in this film (played by Kurtwood Smith), but they certainly didn’t value a future in the arts and they discouraged me from it at nearly every turn. So I related with — and still relate with — Dead Poets Society on a personal, emotional level.
Weir brings his trademark visual lyricism and hypnotic style to the film, which is further embellished by warm period production design, costumes, and cinematography. Like many Weir films, it’s designed to wash over you like a tone poem, not to simply guide you from one narrative beat to the next. Weir’s films are meditations on themes and ideas. This one is about the oppressive nature of conformity and the freedom of self-expression, as well as the importance of art and beauty in a world that increasingly favors productivity and commerce.
To Keating’s critics, I post a long passage of his dialogue here. Consider how confused and lost so many young men are as they try to find their place and purpose in life. I dare you not to acknowledge the potency of these words to anyone hungry for guidance:
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
Dead Poets Society is one of a small handful of films that hit me at just the right time in life — age 16. It had a profound effect on me. After my most recent rewatch, I can concede that the plot mechanics may require some suspension of disbelief, but the message and purpose of the film could not be any more noble or important. This may be more true now than ever before, as our children grow up addicted to screens and controlled by algorithms, completely oblivious that the powerful play is even in progress, and utterly incapable of conjuring anything resembling a verse.
Williams was Oscar-nominated as Keating, carefully balancing his comic sensibilities with the film’s more serious under-riding message. With Weir’s guidance, he finds the perfect tone for the role and leaves an indelible impression. But in truth, it’s more of a supporting performance that Williams gives. The real stars of Dead Poets Society are three of its younger actors. Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, and Josh Charles each give memorable, break-through performances as the students most impacted by Keating’s teachings. The scene in which Keating forces Hawke’s cripplingly shy character to conjure a poem out of thin air before the class is a definite highlight.
With Norman Lloyd (Saboteur) as the school’s stern headmaster, and sparse but evocative scoring by Maurice Jarre.
Academy Award: Best Original Screenplay (Tom Schulman)
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Director, Actor (Robin Williams)