DEAD POETS SOCIETY [1989]: “O’ Captain, My Captain!”

“Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau once said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Don’t be resigned to that. Break out!”

Dead Poets Society is a timeless, human and gushing coming-of-age classic. It’s an undeniably passionate film, an atom bomb of motivation.  It showcases a brotherhood of romantics, young men who seize the day because of their zest for life.  Smartly directed by Weir, beautifully written by Tom Schulman, and powerfully acted by its cast, Dead Poets Society is an incredibly moving picture that stands as one of the best movies of the 1980s.

A new semester in the gothic, highly-regarded, aristocratic all boys-boarding school, ‘Welton Academy’. 1959. Right from the beginning, we are lured into a society brimming with Chevrolets, Buicks, bowler hats and cigars. Speaking out across the grand auditorium, lined with red and gold lined-carpets and roses, Headmaster Gale Nolan (Norman Lloyd) boasts that tradition, honour, discipline and excellence are the Four Pillars of Wisdom that define Welton Academy. Like new student Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), we become immersed in this alien world and watch as he struggles to adapt and make sense of it all. He starts off as a blank slate for Neil Parry (Robert Sean Leonard), the artistically-inclined student who later dreams of the stage (despite his strict father’s wishes), and his friends – Richard Cameron (Dylan Kussman), a strictly-by-the-book type, Gerard Pitts (James Waterston), Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero), Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles), a love-struck youth who makes all the effort to win over his lady love, and Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), a wild rebel who’s up for anything – to imprint upon. They even have their own version of the Four Pillars: travesty, horror, decadence, and excrement.

With the return of a previous alumnus, a-now Professor. John Keating (Robin Williams) is introduced to us as an unorthodox English teacher. Keating’s teaching methods are avant-garde and his ideas do not conform to Welton’s established rules and traditions. As soon as he’s out of sight of his peers, Keating attempts to do what few teachers have done before him – turn these students into independent individuals who can think for themselves. The boys first class with Professor John Keating is a memorable one as he takes them out of the classroom and into the hall. He quotes Walt Whitman, evokes the phrase carpe diem (Latin for “seize the day”) and gets them to look at old photographs of previous alumni in the trophy cases, to give an indication of their own mortality and to inspire them to also seize the day. Keating gets his students to think about English literature in a different way than they have been traditionally accustomed to. He hopes that they will learn to think for themselves. How could you not be inspired by someone like that at such an impressionable age?

He shocks them by further instructing them rip out the introduction to their textbook that posits poetry should be marked on a graph, with its two axises being the poem’s perfection rated against its importance, and the sum of the total area determining its greatness. Through humorous impressions, signature of Williams’ stage persona, Keating exposes the absurdity of applying a mathematical formula to art. When some students hesitate, he tells them “this is not the Bible. You will not go to hell. This is a battle, a war. You will have to learn to think for yourselves.” He continues to awe the boys and audience alike, with an incredibly puissant speech; “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.“

“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?“

It’s academic liberation from then on.

Captured by John Seale’s singularly superb cinematography, Weir’s trademark picturesque landscapes which emphasise of the limitless horizons of Earth – an armada of Geese are startled into flight just as the boys, gangly as goose necks, are too startled into self-awareness. This earthly scene contradicts with the prison-like architecture of ‘Welton Academy’, and the stiff-necked authoritarian elites who rule the school. The boys are instantly enamoured with Keating, his teaching methods, and his legacy at ‘Hell-ton‘ (an inside joke shared between students and him). Inspired by Keating’s love of the written word, and passion for literature, they soon learn of a secret poetry club to which he belonged while at Welton, known as the Dead Poets Society, which consisted of a group of boys who met after lights out at “the old Indian cave off campus”, and let their favourite poetry amorously “drip from their mouths like honey.” Keating passes-down to the boys his poetry anthology from when he was a student, marked with a emphasis is a classic, naturalist poem written by philosopher and essayist, Henry David Thoreau, traditionally read at the beginning of each meeting, which reads;
“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

In order to bond as a group, the seven young actors that played Keating’s students played soccer together and ran through simple acting exercises prior to principal photography. To get them into the spirit of their characters, Weir created an “atmosphere where there was no real difference between off-camera and on-camera – they became those people.” Weir smartly shot the film in sequence so that the actors would experience the same rollercoaster of emotions as their characters. 

The last 30 minutes of Dead Poets Society take on a considerably darker tone as the boys are forced to grow up fast when faced with a suspicious death of one of their fellow students. They must make some important choices that will ultimately change their future, as they must decide if they should stick together or save their own backs, as the ramifications could affect their future academic careers. Weir takes great care to show how this death affects not just the boys, but Keating as well in a deeply profound way.