Overview
Robin Williams toned down his usually manic comic approach in this successful period drama. In 1959, the Welton Academy is a staid but well-respected prep school where education is a pragmatic and rather dull affair. Several of the students, however, have their thoughts on the learning process (and life itself) changed when a new teacher comes to the school. John Keating (Williams) is an unconventional educator who tears chapters of his textbooks and asks his students to stand on their desks to see the world from a new angle. Keating introduces his students to poetry, and his free-thinking attitude and the liberating philosophies of the authors he introduces to his class have a profound effect on his students, especially Todd (Ethan Hawke), who would like to be a writer; Neil ( Robert Sean Leonard), who dreams of being an actor, despite the objections of his father; Knox (Josh Charles), a hopeless romantic; Steven (Allelon Ruggiero), an intellectual who learns to use his heart as well as his head; Charlie (Gale Hansen), who begins to lose his blasé attitude; unconventional Gerard (James Waterston); and practical Richard (Dylan Kussman). Keating urges his students to seize the day and live their lives boldly; but when this philosophy leads to an unexpected tragedy, headmaster Mr. Nolan (Norman Lloyd) fires Keating, and his students leap to his defense. Dead Poets Society was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Williams; it won one, for Tom Schulman's original screenplay.
I found the symbolism employed in this film subtle and intriguing. A comparison is drawn between Williams and Abraham Lincoln. In Walt Whitman's poem ''Captain my Captain'' Whitman pays homage to the dead Lincoln for his many virtues, his strength of character, and, in particular, for freeing an oppressed people. Williams tells his students that, if they dare, they can call him ''captain my captain''. He wants his students to appreciate that he is trying to help them free their minds so they can think for themselves. This brings Williams into conflict with the school Principal who believes that students should learn to conform to society, and that rigid discipline is the better curriculum.
I found another subtle connection between Lincoln and one of characters, although it was probably not the director's intention. When Abraham Lincoln came to appreciate the horrific deadly impact of the Civil War on the lives of so many of his people, he couldn't bear the burden. Employing what may be called a self-preservation mechanism, Lincoln laid the burden of the Civil War on God's shoulders. He came to view the war as God's punishment to his Nation for allowing the egregious institution of slavery to endure for so long. So it was with Leonard's father. He could not deal with the guilt he felt for the loss of his son, so he used William's teaching methods as his scapegoat. Unfortunately William's shoulders were not as broad as God's, and his life and career were devastated.
Weir also used religious allusion when directing the scene in Leonard's bedroom, where Leonard wears the wreath from the Shakespearean play in which he starred. This apparently had some connection to the thorny crown Christ wore when he was impaled. Weir was likely implying that Leonard is to be considered a sacrifice on the alter of his father's unreasoning close-mindedness; though it may not be inappropriate to consider him as one impaled on the 'cross' of youthful misapprehension and miss-guidance.
One of the movie's elements of conflict was the ideological tension between William's and his employer. Williams was a romantic idealist; the principle of the school for which he worked was an unbending, rigid realist. Williams probably knew that his innovative if somewhat unorthodox teaching methods would ultimately cause him to butt heads with the school system, but his love for young people and for teaching, coupled with his belief that he could make a difference in his students lives, encouraged him to follow his convictions. The tension between Williams and the school was