Movie Review on Dead Poets Society

The film by Peter Weir makes a lot of poetry noise, and there are short excerpts from Tennyson, Herrick, Whitman, and even Vachel Lindsay, as well as a bold journey to the prose that takes us as far as Thoreau’s Walden. However, neither of these authors are learned in a manner that would earn their language admiration; they are merely looted for phrases to export the students to more personal liberty. The students will enjoy poetry at the end of a wonderful teacher’s course in poetry; what they really enjoy at the end of this teacher’s semester is the teacher.

As the iconoclastic John Keating, the unorthodox English teacher who uses his appreciation of poetry and classic literature to knock down walls at the hierarchical Welton Academy, played by Robin Williams. Keating urges his youthful charges to ‘seize the day,’ defy the rigid rules of the academy and just be themselves.

Williams has been doing a fine job of playing an articulate, quick-witted, well-read young man for most of the time. But then there are scenes in which the actor is punctured by his stage persona-like where he makes impressions of Shakespeare’s Marlon Brando and John Wayne. Compared with such other great film teachers as Miss Jean Brodie and Professor Kingsfield, there is also a peculiar lack of substance to his character. Rather than a human being, Keating is more like a narrative device.