Dead Poets Society is a dance of dialogue, above all things. It is never lost on the viewer the privilege that these boys have, at a prep school in a resort town in America. Keating’s character just becomes another cog in the wheel, something that moves the plot forward.
The central tenet of this film is the tension between Neil and his father. The film screams comfort in its colour palette, location, and cinematography. Perhaps it is that cosiness that keeps bringing the viewer back to the film, despite its idealism. It is carried on the backs of stellar, theatrical performances, that attempt to "suck the marrow" out of Schulman's superficial script, beautiful production design that is embellished by the beauty of Vermont, and Maurice Jarre's heart-wrenching music. This film evidences the fact that a good film doesn't have to have a spectacular story, it just needs to be packaged the right way.
Image Source: Touchstone Pictures
The film is paradoxical, something that is exemplified when Keating encourages these young, impressionable men to have “original thought.” The question is, do his pedagogical methods leave any room for that? A pivotal scene is a lecture in which the students are reading an anthology, with an introduction by Dr J. Evans Pritchard. This piece is mocked for mechanising poetry, and the students are instructed to tear it out of the books. Pritchard's writing is called a barrier to a good, deep understanding of poetry, evidence of the violent views they (or just Keating) hold of intellectualism. The strong, theatrical performances distract the viewer from the fact that all of the students ironically comply with Keating and never really question this literal and figurative avoidance of an idea.
Image Source: Touchstone Pictures
The script makes heavy use of poetry from the likes of Frost, Tennyson, Whitman and Wordsworth, but in almost all senses, it is advertorial, and taken entirely out of context. It shows the adolescence of Keating himself, who places emphasis on his interpretation of a few verses (for example, his interpretation of Frost’s The Road Not Taken), as opposed to the meaning a full-length poem embodies. When you see the perspective on humanities in the story, it is devoid of rigour. It is about sentimentality. Again, we must ask ourselves, are the humanities just about feeling? Why must thought be abandoned? Why is critique forgone for admiration?
Why does the film speak of original thought, and abandon it altogether? Why does it take beautiful poetry out of context to fit the narrative, when that is exactly what it condemns?
“Carpe diem,” a phrase famously used in this film, is the way several teenagers all over the world still choose to portray their perspective on life. Unfortunately, that is yet another line taken out of context from Horace’s Odes. The full line, “carpe diem quam minimum credula postero,” translates to “pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one.” This can be interpreted as enjoying a moment to its fullest without worrying about what the future brings; essentially, being fully present. The original is the complete opposite of the urgency this film implied in “seizing the day.” In more ways than one, it is reminiscent of Marxist thought. Of revolution that brings immediate change. And that shows the film’s adolescence, more than anything else.
Well written with a crisp and captivating beginning.