From the Vault Friday, May 29, 2009 By Sthephany Delgado/Section Editor/review Robin Williams plays a teacher who encourages his students to expand their creative boundaries. - photo courtesy of Walt Disney Video Advertising Dead Poet’s Society (1989) “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world” said unconventional English teacher John Keating (played by Robin Williams) to his restrained and culturally blinded prep school students.     Filmed in 1989, ‘The Dead Poet Society’ continues to be one of the greatest late 80’s movies that still inspires the spontaneous spirit in every person, ranging from uptight teachers to naïve students.     ‘The Dead Poets Society’ tells the story of an eccentric new teacher who takes on seven students, Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles), Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), Richard Cameron (Dylan Kussman), Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) and Gerard Pitts (James Waterston), who attend the Harvard-like Welton Academy Prep School, which is based on four principles: Tradition, Honor, Discipline and Excellence.     Keating then shows these students the ultimate power of “carpe diem” (‘seize the day” in Latin) and encourages them to apply that to all aspects in life: their rigorous school life, literature, and at home.     Keating asks the boys, “O Captain! My captain!” if they feel comfortable enough, and sure enough they do eventually. The rest of the movie is a series of the boys awakening to the creative environment they did not know existed.     The boys also decide to revive an old literary club that Keating once belonged to call the Dead Poet’s Society. In this club the boys truly get to exercise their new found freedom; Todd fails to do a written assignment and then realizes that he possesses a creative flair in writing, Charlie writes a controversial article in a flyer that said girls should be allowed in school (he then receives a paddling from hard nosed Headmaster Gary Nolan, Norman Lloyd); and Neil, discovering his passion for acting, auditions for a role in Shakespeare’s ‘Mid Summer’s Night Dream,’ against his father’s aspirations (he wants him to become a doctor and attend Harvard); he disapproves of his son’s new hobby and both clash heads.     His father then threatens him if he doesn’t withdraw from the play; he will make him go to military school and withdraw him from Welton. Neil, goes on with his role as Puck and delivers an amazing performance; he then commits suicide with his father’s shotgun, overcome with grief and desperation with the life that is already planned out for him.     His parents and the headmaster hold an investigation over the accident and blame Keating for his death and for restarting the club. He is fired and comes back into the boy’s classroom (currently being taught by Nolan) to collect other things, when the members of the Dead Poet’s Society climb onto their desks and exclaim “O Captain! My Captain!” as a “salute” to Keating.     Nolan is visibly furious and feels defeated, while Keating leaves the private school swelled with the pride only a teacher feels when they know they have left a deep impression on such young lives.

Back to the articles list