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Dead Poets Society review by Christopher Null
I'm the first to admit that I get a little sappy when writing about Dead Poets Society. I first saw the film during my senior year of high school, and 16 years later it's a movie that is still with me, one that I go back to time and time again. There's a little bit of formula at work here: A stuffy rep school, 1950s, a collection of impressionable young boys, and a teacher that will change their lives. But there's something at work that turns what could have been a forgettable, droll piece of saccharine storytelling into a classic. Part of it is Robin Williams as Mr. Keating, a young English teacher that uses poetry to teach them how to "Sieze the day," to suck the marrow out of life, as Thoreau put it. The poetry angle is an interested and unexpected one. And writer Tom Schulman and director Peter Weir have no confusion that the idea is a little corny. Putting a kid in front of the class, covering his eyes, and forcing him to free associate until he comes up with a verse about Walt Whitman? Sounds ridiculous, but it works. In fact, it's one of the most powerful scenes in the film. That's because the kids in the film are just as good as Williams is here. Robert Sean Leonard is the ostensible star as Neil, a deeply repressed lad who's the class president type yet dreams of doing something artistic, despite the insistence by his father (Kurtwood Smith) that he become a doctor. And then there's roommate Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), an intensely shy young man who's attending Welton Academy for the first time this year and will be memorably brought out of his shell, fighting all the way, by Keating. The other students of note -- Josh Charles as a lovesick kid and Gale Hansen as the unforgettable rebel "Nuwanda" -- are equally apt. Ultimately the film revolves around Neil's story, when he decides for the first time to defy his father and act in a local play -- as Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, of all things. This leads to a series of catastrophic events that culminates in (spoiler alert from here on out) Neil's suicide and the scapegoating/firing of Keating for it. At once uplifting and emotionally crushing, there's no way to leave this movie without wanting to somehow improve your life and follow Keating's advice by seizing the day. Every time I watch the film I'm compelled to complete some lingering project, plan a trip, move into a new house, or do something unforgettable. Weir's direction perfectly captures the 1950s mood -- an era of repression just on the verge of breaking wide open -- and Williams manages to keep his mania in check for the bulk of the film, trotting out an impression here or there when the story requires it. In recent years, Dead Poets Society has become a curious platform for deconstruction and revisionism. Viewers wonder, among other things, whether Neil was so troubled because he was secretly gay. Whether Keating might genuinely be guilty of contributing to his death. Whether "Sieze the day" isn't such a great motto after all. I'm not actually supporting any of these ideas per se, but the latter-day ruminating gives the film more weight than you might otherwise think, and it makes the movie all the richer for it. I only have one question: What the heck is a Thigh Man (as it reads in Keating's yearbook)?
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