Dead Poets Society

A film set at a boarding school in 1959. Welton is a strict school. It has four principles, most of its graduates go into medicine or law, and the families planned that in advance. A new literature teacher arrives. Keating went to the same school and in his first lesson has the students tear the introduction out of the book. The lessons take place not at desks but in the corridor, in the yard and on top of the desks. The students hear the name of an old society. They start meeting at night in a cave in the woods to read poetry. From there the film follows several lives at once. One boy takes up acting, another approaches a girl, another writes for the school paper. The Neil line is the centre. His father wants him to study medicine and forbids the play when he finds out. What the narrative is interested in is not literature but permission: the film says a teacher did not tell the boys what to do, only showed them there was an option, and it also shows what that cost. The inquiry near the end is uncomfortable. The school looks for someone to blame and finds one. The last scene takes place in a classroom and there is almost no dialogue. The screenplay is by Tom Schulman and won an Academy Award for original screenplay. It was shot at a real school in Delaware and the change of seasons is used in the structure. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles and Kurtwood Smith are in the cast. Peter Weir directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes school and teacher films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an optimistic ending; the narrative hardens in the middle and the close is bitter.