Dead Poets Society

1989 anti-conformist propaganda

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An unorthodox literature teacher at the Welton Academy clashes with the "tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence" ideology of the all-boys prep school. He's a terrible influence on his students, encouraging them to tear up their textbooks, stand on their desks, read poetry, and shoot themselves in the face. They form the titular poetry-reading club and start learning to think for themselves.

How dangerous is it to start a movie with bagpipes? And how many misguided and just plain awful English teachers did this thing spawn? As a high schooler who liked to imagine himself as a burgeoning nonconformist, this movie appealed to me, but I wondered what my stuffy middle-aged self would think. Well, it's a bit manipulative and pretty stuffy (despite the bagpipes), a movie that does often seize the cliches, but Robin Williams' subdued and exceptional performance and two handfuls of key memorable scenes make this an entertaining and downright inspiring motion picture. Most of the classroom (or sometimes out-of-the-classroom) scenes with Williams teaching are really good. The first class scene in the hallway with the ghosts of Welton's past and their similar haircuts, the barbaric yawping scene's, the anti-Pritchard page-ripping, the desk-standing perspective lesson. It's good stuff, all things that I've tried with my teaching jobs but have been reprimanded for "making too much noise in the hallway," touching kids' faces, vandalizing textbooks, and "encouraging dare-devilism." I like that this is more about the kids than it is Robin Williams' character. He's the instigator or catalyst, but Peter Weir wisely focuses more on the boys and this moment when they're ready to challenge authority and have their own ideas. The boys' performances seem authentic to me, a guy who did not attend a fancy-schmanzy prep school in the late-50s, and the adult antagonists--Norman Lloyd as Nolan and Kurtwood Smith as Neil's dad Mr. Perry--are also really good. This isn't as consistently great as Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris but it's still a really good movie.