Review: Dead Poets Society

“O Captain! My Captain!“

What’s it all about? Mr. John Keating (Robin Williams), an English teacher at a prestigious preparatory school, inspires his students to change their repressed lives through his teaching of poetry and literature. Cue the tears, man. Cue the tears.

I watched this film at exactly the right time. I started to feel somewhat indolent after being so sick these past few months. I stopped really caring about the books I was reading for school — I’m an English literature specialist — and preferred just surfing the web for videos of tiny Japanese children playing the ukulele. “Dead Poets Society” shook me up a little and forced me to realize that I’m reading goddamed Hemingway and Plath and Naipaul. I had forgotten how much I love what I’m doing — you know, all that “Carpe Diem” kind of shit. I’m in my last semester of university, and I should be enjoying it as much as I can while it lasts. Instead of flacking off in class, I should probably pay more attention and get my act together. For god’s sake, my professors are published authors, institutions in their fields. Hell, one of them even won the Order of Canada. Where else can you spend three hours a week with someone like that, and one who actually knows who you are? If I’m ever going to find anyone as inspiring as Mr. Keating, it’ll probably be here. “Dead Poets Society” is a life-affirming film promoting the ideals of the arts, youth and the freedom to be yourself. I laughed and I cried — and I feel all the better for it.

But, by god, that Japanese kid can play.

Favourite Scene: Spoiler alert. I’m going to push away from the more obvious answer — “O Captain! My Captain!” — and say Ethan Hawke’s performance after the boys tell him about his roommate’s suicide. I think the last time I cried this much during a movie was at the end of “The Shawshank Redemption“. But those were insanely happy tears, and these were far from happy.

Notes: Directed by Peter Weir; Produced by Steven Haft, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas; Written by Tom Schulman; Starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Kurtwood Smith, Josh Charles, Gale Hansen, Dylan Kussman, Allelon Ruggiero, James Waterston, Norman Lloyd, Alexandra Powers; Music by Maurice Jarre.