A Bad Review Of A Classic Flim

A few readers have commented that I never seem to write any bad reviews. Which is fair, a hangover from my time in the world of amateur dramatics, I find it hard to criticize projects I know people have worked really hard on. But never let it be said that I don’t take on constructive criticism! Because I watched a film I didn’t like. 

Full disclosure: I have been meaning to watch this film for years. As a friend commented, ‘Robin Williams? Poetry (when you are an English graduate, people assume you love poetry)? Thought you’d be all over that shit!’ And by all accounts, Dead Poets Society (1989) should be a hit. Starring the man who made so many 90’s childhoods great (including my own), the late, great Robin Williams. Not to mention a very young Robert Sean Leonard (House MD) and a young Ethan Hawke to boot! A bushel of fine actors in a picturesque setting. What went wrong?

The story takes place in an extremely conservative all-boys boarding school in Vermont in 1959. Robin Williams plays the new English teacher who inspires the boys with his unorthodox teaching methods. These teenage boys are so repressed in their academic and social lives that they are even banned from listening to the radio and expected to focus solely on their academic pursuits. Consequently, being encouraged to stand on their desks and rip pages from their school books blows their adolescent minds. We find out that the English teacher is also an ex-pupil of the school and in his day, he and his peers snuck out at night to recite poetry in a cave…yeah. These gatherings were referred to as the ‘Dead Poets Society’. The teacher indirectly encourages the boys to resurrect the club in order to “suck out all the marrow of life”. This seems to involve sitting in a wet cave, after midnight, reading Victorian love poems whilst smoking. No judgment here, my friends and I hung out in graveyards as teenagers, but it just doesn’t make for terribly interesting viewing from the outside.

In my opinion, the most infuriating thing about this film is that there is good stuff here! The oppressive nature of a school that doles out corporal punishment, combined with the boy’s parents who either try to control every aspect of their child’s life and stifle any and all self-expression, or give them the same birthday present two years in a row. All the while, the boys are teetering on the cusp of manhood, simmering with burgeoning sexuality. Using Lord Byron’s poetry to illustrate the boy’s frustration and yearning for something more eternal could have been inspired. But somehow it just falls flat.

The film just wants so badly to be seen as inspirational and poignant that it constantly gets in its own way. Even the famous ending where Robert Sean Leonard’s character (Neil) shoots himself with his father’s revolver because his father won’t let him pursue his dream of being an actor. This could have been an incredibly dramatic scene, yet again, it just falls flat. I’m not asking to see Neil’s brains spread all over the wall or anything. I actually liked that you didn’t see any blood and the scene played out in complete silence, but the acting felt forced. Neil’s father is played by Kurtwood Smith (That 70’s Show), who I know is a good actor ’cause I’ve seen it, but he just doesn’t sell the scene. 

My fellow millennials may be reminded of the Friends episode (S1E E21 ‘The One with the Fake Monica’) when a character says Dead Poets Society changed her life because it was ‘so incredibly…boring.’ And I can’t help but agree. 

Every aspect just feels so self-conscious and manufactured (which is ironic when the film is supposed to be about appreciating the unfiltered beauty of life). I could practically feel the writer and director sitting next to me whispering, ‘Do you get it? This is so deep and meaningful. Even calling the English teacher John Keating (could he be named after the English poet John Keats?). The final scene where the boys stand on their desks to call out ‘O captain! My captain!’ to the disgraced Mr Keats could have been really touching, and maybe it’s because I saw the Family Guy parody first, but it just came off as silly. 

Now I am not a cynic; some things I did appreciate. I do agree with Mr Keats philosophy that poetry shouldn’t be scientifically studied, it’s about the yearning from one’s soul, not the measured rhyme and meter. I don’t think The Romantics would thank us for our cold deconstruction of their work. 

I also enjoyed the scene with the desk set. Todd (Ethan Hawke) receives a desk set from his parents for the second year in a row for his birthday from his parents. What more could a teenage boy want, eh? Neil convinces him to throw it off the roof of the school, which Todd gleefully does. When the airborne desk set inevitably smashes, Neil tells Todd not to worry, as he will get a new one next year. Here, you can see a peek of Robert Sean Leonard’s debonair, tongue-in-cheek delivery that has been sadly MIA throughout the movie. Even Robin Williams’ performance was somewhat stilted and missing his usual lightning-in-a-bottle flair.

All in all, the movie just seems to fumble every beat to the point where it is not so much inspiring as insipid.