Dead Poets Society Essay

Both The Mosquito Coast and Weirs next feature, Dead Poets hostelry (1989), foreground fathers myopically invested in misguided personal aspirations. A significant searing and commercial success, Dead Poets Society is a period piece gear up in the 1950s in Welton College, a private sons work, at the vegetable marrow of New Englands establishment. It is a study in the mechanisms with which the ruling mannikin absorbs and expels rebellious influences before proceeding undeterred in its primary electric charge of reproducing itself. As in Picnic, Weir introduces eager young lives both oozing likely and straining under expectation. In both period pieces Weir deftly establishes the regulatory weight of the institutions traditions through repeated interior, constricted reports.Here, however, the quarrel to the status quo, far from being a mysterious force, is an enthusiastic, unconventional teacher, pot Keating (Robin Williams), who neverthe slight will play a role in leaders the boys to a traumatic awakening. Keatings passion for literature moves his students to personal quests of self-expression appoint your lives extraordinary, he pleads. The film evokes the American spirit of democratic self-actualisation, as epitomised by the poet Walt Whitman, a portrait of whom Keating displays in his house mode and gestures toward when inciting the boys to emulate his superfluous spirit. Inspired by Keating, the boys re-establish the Dead Poets Society, a club that Keating himself had participated in when a student at Welton. They convene at night in the romantic setting of a nearby cave and share poetry.Keatings encouragement proves most successful with ace of the Dead Poets, Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), a stripling so neglected by his parents that he is fearful of human inter action mechanism, and petrified of universe speaking. Weir subtly conveys the evolving effect Keatings presence has on Todd, through apt camera placement in a series of scenes. In the initial scene, Todd chases his roommate, Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), about their dorm room, trying to retrieve a poem he was composing as an assignment for Keating, which Neil is now playfully reciting aloud. The camera captures the action in a continuous spiralling, pan peter of the boys running in circles within their confined space, creating a spirited, flowing sense of movement. Later, in a long take (28 seconds), the static camera observes Todd, again in his room, as he reads his poem to himself while qualifyinging in circles.He is initially pacing at a steady rhythm and smiling to himself, animate by his work, but he then gradually slows and begins to look less sure, before ultimately stopping and despondently tearing up his poem. A cut transfers us to the boys classroom the next day, where they are reading their compositions. Todd cowers, press he did not prepare a poem, but is encouraged by Keating to usher forth inspiration from Whitmans portrait for an impro vised composition in present of the class. As Keating covers Todds eyes, eliciting poetry from the student, the two walk around in continuous circles, followed by the camera, which in turn circles around them in a continuous shot. The effect is a vertiginous one of dizzying movement, which captures the moment of release and rupture for Todd, as he overcomes his inhibitions and ad lib recites a heartfelt creation, eliciting impressed silence, followed by applause from his classmates. This series of circular movements, suggesting Todds burgeoning capacity for self-expression, represents Weir at his most subtle and sophisticated.Todds ability to spontaneously compose and recite is rendered all the more persuasive by the virtually subliminal referencing of the previous moments of circular movement. Keatings influence holds different consequences for Todds roommate, the kind and charming Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard). When Neils father learns that his son has discovered a passion f or theatre, he forbids him from performing in the local production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. Neil defies him, only to be informed after(prenominal) the performance that his father is removing him from Welton the next day and sending him instead to army academy, after which he will attend medical school. The news constitutes a ten-year sentence for the artistically inclined teenager, who cannot bear the prospect. That night, in a pursue sequence of elisions, we learn through his parents distraught, slow doubtfulness reactions that Neil has killed himself.John Keating is indirectly blamed for Neils death and the school administration coax some of the boys Keating had taken into his trust into condemning his unconventional teaching. quite than presenting a facile depiction of a repressive establishments collapse against the ultimately victorious seekers of self-expression (a popular American tale), Weir explores the scapegoating mechanism through which the establishment respo nds to a challenge to its symbolic order. As Keatings class sits sheepishly, listening to droll instruction from the school principal who orchestrated Keatings dismissal and who is now teaching his poetry class, their former teacher enters the room to collect his belongings.Before Keating leaves, Todd, previously unable to talk in front of a group, boldly stands on his desk (a position Keating had occasionally encouraged them to have on in order to change their perspective) and turns in one hold circular motion, this time to face Keating and address him with the teachers favourite Whitman address, Oh Captain, my Captain. Rousing music builds to a crescendo as the school principal repeatedly orders Todd to get down or risk expulsion. The boy stands firm, looking more composed than ever before, as various some other students follow his lead. A high angle point of view shot reveals Keating, with eyes watering, from Todds vantage point. With this final scene of defiance, Weir suggest s that the seeds of discontent that will usher in the counter-culture of the 1960s have been sown.