Dead Poets Society (1989)

Official trailer

Dead Poets Society is Peter Weir’s 1989 American coming-of-age drama. The film depicts an English teacher named John Keating arriving at the elite Welton Academy boarding school in 1959 to teach poetry to students whose families have determined their futures. Keating uses unconventional methods including standing on desks, reading poetry aloud, and tearing introductions from textbooks to inspire his students to be true to themselves. Several boys revive the secret Dead Poets Society club Keating had founded as a Welton student decades earlier.

The boys eventually face consequences when Neil Perry’s father discovers his interest in acting and Neil chooses suicide instead of the medical career his father demands. Robin Williams plays John Keating. Robert Sean Leonard plays Neil Perry.

Ethan Hawke plays Todd Anderson. Josh Charles plays Knox Overstreet. Gale Hansen plays Charlie Dalton. Dylan Kussman plays Richard Cameron. Allelon Ruggiero plays Steven Meeks. James Waterston plays Gerard Pitts. Norman Lloyd plays headmaster Gale Nolan. Kurtwood Smith plays Neil’s father Thomas Perry. Tom Schulman wrote the screenplay.

This film affects me. Watching Robin Williams make a room full of scared rich boys care about poetry moves me more than I expect it to, and it’s the dramatic work of his I’d put first. The 8 comes from a script that loves Keating a little more than it questions him, and from a handful of boys who never become more than sketches.

Touchstone Pictures produced the film on a budget of approximately 16 million dollars, and it grossed approximately 235 million dollars worldwide. The work won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Among inspiring-teacher productions, Dead Poets Society ranks with the most commercially successful ever made and helped establish the template later films of the type have continued to follow. Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995), Freedom Writers (2007), and other productions have traced their structure to what Dead Poets established. The film also gave Robin Williams material that showed his serious dramatic range two years before his Best Actor nomination for The Fisher King (1991) and eight years before his Best Supporting Actor win for Good Will Hunting (1997).

Williams played Keating with real restraint that his comedy persona hadn’t previously required. Peter Weir directed the film with the same careful attention to atmosphere that distinguished his Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Witness (1985), and his other productions. The work has aged into mixed critical reception that the initial commercial success didn’t predict.

Williams as Keating

Robin Williams plays John Keating with a restraint his later films often abandoned, and that restraint is what I admire most about the performance. He has real teaching authority, and he passes up every chance to turn Keating into a comedy vehicle. He reads the poetry seriously and talks to his students at the level his philosophy demands, with no winking asides. I think a looser, jokier Keating would have sunk the whole film.

Williams received a Best Actor nomination for the performance and lost to Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot.

The nomination acknowledged work that broke from his established comedy tone. Williams’s career consistently showed capacity for serious work alongside his comedy. Dead Poets Society falls within his strong dramatic period that also included Awakenings (1990) and The Fisher King (1991). The pattern of comedic performers succeeding in serious roles when given suitable material continued through Williams films that followed.

The Suicide Question

Neil Perry kills himself after his father confronts him about his role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and demands he transfer to military school. The suicide is still argued over. Some readings interpret Keating’s teaching as contributing factor in Neil’s death. Other readings interpret Neil’s father’s authoritarian control as the actual cause.

The film doesn’t explicitly resolve the question. The later investigation at the school assigns blame to Keating, who’s fired as a result. Whether the institutional blame matches actual responsibility remains contested.

The suicide reflects 1950s social conditions that limited what a son could do against an authoritarian father. Neil sees no path forward except surrendering himself to his father’s plan or ending his life. The film argues that family and institutional pressure can make suicide look like the only option left to the person trapped inside it. Critics have argued for decades over whether it endorses that reading or critiques it. I think Kurtwood Smith’s cold, immovable father is the reason the whole sequence hits as hard as it does.

The Carpe Diem Theme

Keating’s teaching philosophy centers on the Latin phrase carpe diem, conventionally translated as seize the day. The phrase appears throughout the film as recurring motif. The students adopt the philosophy with varying success. Charlie Dalton publishes an article demanding girls be admitted to Welton. Knox Overstreet pursues a girlfriend whose family disapproves. Neil takes the role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream against his father’s prohibition. Each carpe diem decision produces consequences.

The film’s relationship to the philosophy it depicts has produced critical disagreement. Some readings argue the film endorses carpe diem as suitable response to institutional authority.

Other readings argue the film shows that carpe diem produces destruction when the surrounding institutional conditions can’t accommodate the resulting choices. Both readings have textual support. The consequences are mixed. Charlie’s expulsion confirms institutional power. Knox’s relationship succeeds. Neil’s death represents catastrophic failure. The film refuses to resolve whether the philosophy works or fails.

I side with the second reading, and I like the film more for leaving room for it. Charlie’s stunt makes me wince, Knox’s romance makes me smile, and Neil breaks my heart, and I think that mix is the truest thing Schulman wrote.

Is Dead Poets Society worth watching?

Later inspiring-teacher films have followed the template Dead Poets Society set, and I think it’s still the one to beat.

Robin Williams shows his dramatic range with a restraint his comedy persona never asked of him, and Neil’s death refuses an easy moral. It gets an 8 from me because the script leans on Keating’s charm a little too much and leaves several of the boys thin. Watch it for Williams, for Robert Sean Leonard, and for a film that won’t tell you whether seizing the day was worth it.

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