Dead Poets Society | Review | 1989

“Sometimes the most beautiful poetry can be about simple things like a cat or a flower or rain. You see poetry can come from anything with the stuff of revelation in it. Just don’t let your poems be ordinary.”

- Dead Poets Society

 

Dead poets society is a movie directed by Peter Weir starring Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke (yes, the Before trilogy guy), Robert Sean Leonard, and many more actors with their characters having interesting plot points.

The plot of this movie revolves around a boarding school that stands upon these four pillars - tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence; this school is known for producing top-quality students who eventually join the ivy league universities. John Keating, the character played by Robin Williams in this movie joins the school as a teacher of English literature. John through his unorthodox methods of teaching add some spark to his students’ already monotonous lives and shows them that there’s more to life other than law, medicine, business, engineering, etc. via poetry.

The performances of all the actors in this movie are amazing, Robin Williams as John Keating is surely able to make an impact on the audiences through his acting and what he preaches throughout the movie.

The movie also shows how the parents who enroll their students in this school are very orthodox in nature.

Robert Sean Leonard as Neil Perry whose father played by Kurtwood Smith is a very strict man and wouldn’t let him do anything other than medicine, but, Neil rebels and…..(watch the movie, no spoilers here).

Todd Anderson played by Ethan Hawke justifies his role; a shy, sincere and obedient student whose character takes a turn towards the end.

The film is well written by Tom Schulman, it was successful in expressing the excellent emotions which the movie has through words, it perfectly encircles how caged people are in their minds just to lead the “ideal life” which the society knits for them, in this race of fitting in people forget their uniqueness.

The movie is so perfectly directed that it doesn’t deviate from its purpose i.e. “self-expression”.

The cinematography in the movie is beautiful and really engrosses the viewers in the movie, here are some stills:

And ofcourse the famous last scene from this movie:

“O captain, my captain!”

And this is how it changed the perspectives of the students.

This movie is very wholesome and it is worth watching, it will make you think.

To conclude this we would quote one of our favorite lines by John to his students “Now we all have a great need for acceptance. But you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go “That’s ba-a-a-a-ad.” Robert Frost said, “Two roads diverged in the wood and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”

P.S.: The movie ‘Mohabbatein’ by Aditya Chopra is a remake of this movie.

Stay safe!!