Dead Poets Society

 

Image credit : https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/news-photo/film-dead-poets-society-by-peter-weir-news-photo/594418190

The story of Dead Poets Society revolves around an English teacher, who has joined a school, was famous for its traditional methods of teaching and having very high standard and strictness. In this film, the teens attending one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in the country aren't prepared for the new English teacher named Mr. Keating (Robin Williams). He encourages these future doctors and lawyers with pushy parents to think for themselves and "seize the day!" He also subtly encourages the boys to form the Dead Poets Society. They sneak out at night repeatedly to read poetry and bond over girls they like and the pressures they face. It's all healthy fun until Charlie (Gale Hansen) taunts the school with hints of their activities, leading to a full inquiry. But that's only the start of the trouble Mr. Keating and the Dead Poets Society faces.

 

Robin Williams makes of Keating an immensely sympathetic presence that suffuses the film even when he is off-screen. Renowned for his improvisational flights, his performance here is controlled - warm rather than wacky, stirring rather than wild. His facility at letting rip is used judiciously to marvelous effect in classroom scenes in which he soars: exhorting the boys to tear up their texts, circling a shy student to squeeze a poetic outburst from the startled boy, impersonating John Wayne playing Macbeth.

A group of the boys form the Dead Poets Society in imitation of a secret club led by their hero in his own schooldays at the academy. The boys' clandestine nocturnal meetings in a cave are innocent enough adventures during which they spout poetry and tackle deep and meaningful matters like girls, booze and life.

Unfortunately the plot takes a bumpy diversion into the anticipated clash with authority, concentrating on the trouble between one of Keating's most promising boys and his ambitious, insensitive father. A tragedy - semaphored way before it finally occurs - leads to hysterical recriminations and reprisals that cruelly chill the film's previously celebratory tone, revived at the last with a corny but spirit-lifting end.