Dead Poets’ Society
“O captain, my captain.”
The movie Dead Poets Society is a masterpiece written by Tom Schulman, directed by Peter Weir and presented by a stellar cast including Robin Williams, Kurtwood Smith, Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard along with others.
The movie is based in a preparatory school for young boys: Welton Academy. The academy, with its four pillars that are repeated every semester to its student, is governed as well as patronized by stern men in their coats, with polished manners; men who are intolerant to dreams and passion and are misled by misconstrued and narrow notions of success. Dead Poets Society is the story of young boys who find ways to ‘Seize the Day’ in a school where each move, each step and each activity is closely monitored and regulated. One finds his own voice, One his lady love and another his passion for acting.
Dead Poets Society is not your conventional movie. It is deeper. Much ahead of its time. It is a movie that stands up on its desk, while all others are sitting down, and yawps: ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!’. It plays a morose saxophone tune, in a dingy cave of boys, so that their souls may rise and touch the sky. It writes ordinary poetry in the minds of viewers. It tells them that they can keep standing when all others choose to walk; and should they choose to walk along, to have their own peculiar stride. To be proud of one’s inner voice no matter how whimsical it may seem. To work up the courage, not only to stand up to your oppressor but also to change your name to something completely atrocious.
Apart from this, this movie is not about happy endings. The ‘gentlemen’ who run the system emerge as victors. It is through the defeat of those who do not conform, those who dare and those who live, that the unsettling aspect of human behaviour is highlighted. The truth that faces you, eye to eye, and asks you, “why do you stay silent when injustice holds it’s winning stance in front of you?”
With Dead Poets Society, you laugh and you cry, you think and you fly.
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. To quote from Whitman, “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… and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
John Keating, Dead Poets Society.