Dead Poets Society

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Dead Poets Society is a 1989 film which tells the story of an English teacher at a 1950s boys' school who inspires his students to overcome their reluctance to make changes in their lives and stirs up their interests in poetry and literature.

The film was set at the fictional Welton Academy in Vermont, but it was actually filmed at St. Andrew's School in Delaware. A novelization by Nancy H. Kleinbaum based on the movie's script has also been published.

Synopsis

Seven boys, Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles), Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), Richard Cameron (Dylan Kussman), Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) and Gerard Pitts (James Waterston) attend the prestigious Welton Academy prep school (which is nicknamed "Hellton" by many of the boys). The school's values are based on four principles: Tradition, Honor, Discipline and Excellence. The boys lampoon these principles as Travesty, Horror, Decadence, and Excrement.

Among the teachers the boys meet on their first day of class is the new English teacher, Mr. Keating (played by Robin Williams), who tells the students that they can call him "O Captain! My Captain!" (the title of a Walt Whitman poem) if they feel daring. His first lesson is unorthodox by Welton standards, taking them out of the classroom to focus on the idea of carpe diem. In a later class Keating has one of the boys read the introduction to the poetry textbook, which describes how to place the quality of a poem on a scale, and give it a number, a process that was popular in literary circles at the time. Keating, much to the astonishment (and delight) of the students, finds the idea ridiculous and has them rip out the introduction. Eventually he has the students stand on his desk as a reminder to look at the world in a different way.

The rest of the movie is a process of awakening, in which the boys (and the audience) discover that authority can and must always act as a guide, but the only place where one can find out his or her true identity is within himself or herself. To that end, the boys secretly revive an old literary club to which Mr. Keating was a member called the Dead Poets Society. However, when the faculty learns of its existence, they demand to know who is involved to punish them for subverting the school.

This free thinking brings trouble for one of the boys, Neil, who decides to pursue acting, rather than medicine, the career his father (played by Kurtwood Smith) chose for him. Mr. Keating urges Neil to tell his father how he feels before starring in a play, a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which Neil had the role of Puck, but he could not bear facing his father (a highly-dictative man). After Neil's brilliant performance fails to please his father, who, instead, decides to force Neil away from acting and into Harvard for studying science, Neil commits suicide with his father's revolver.

As a consequence of Neil's suicide, Mr. Keating becomes the scapegoat of the schools's headmaster, Mr. Nolan, and is forced to leave Welton Academy. The film concludes with the boys, led by the previously very timid Anderson, standing on their desks — in front of Mr. Nolan — addressing Mr. Keating as "O Captain! My Captain!" showing him that his messages have been understood and appreciated.

Awards and nominations

It won the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Robin Williams), Best Director and Best Picture.

Trivia

The passage in the poetry textbook Keating has his students read from at the beginning of the movie is taken nearly word-for-word from an early chapter of Laurence Perrine's Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, which is still occasionally used by AP English classes in the United States.

The inspiration for the Keating character is University of Connecticut English professor Sam Pickering, a former teacher of author Thomas Schulman at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee.

The film was also inspired by the book Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton, which has been adapted for television or film at least four times.

The reading of "To the Virgins, Make Much of Time" and the whispering of "Carpe Diem" and "seize the day" were used as sound clips in American progressive metal band Dream Theater's "A Change of Seasons", a 23-minute epic song relating closely to the film's subject. Scenes from the film were projected onto the back of the stage during the performance of this song at the Metropolis 2000 show at the Roseland Ballroom, New York.

In one episode of Family Guy, Brian is fed up with the remedial english class he is being forced to teach and tells his students to do whatever they want, in response to this the students stand up on their desk quoting "O' Captain, My Captain"

The film has become standard viewing for many high school English classes in North America.

Quotes

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• No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
• Sucking all the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone.
• Listen, you hear it? — Carpe — hear it? — Carpe... carpe diem... seize the day, boys, make your lives extraordinary.
• Language was invented for one reason, boys--to woo women--and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.
• O Captain! My Captain!
• To indeed be a god!
• Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Further reading

Stefan Munaretto: Nancy H. Kleinbaum/Peter Weir. Der Club der toten Dichter (Dead Poets Society). Hollfeld: C. Bange Verlag. 2005 (Königs Erläuterungen und Materialien. Band 431) ISBN 3-8044-1817-1

External links

• Carpe Diem, A Dead Poets Society Page
• {{{2|{{{title|Dead Poets Society}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
• Crazy Dave's Dead Poets Society filmography
• AntiRomantic.com: Dead Poets Society - Death of a Romantic
• Online Critical Resources on DPS

Template:Peter Weir Filmsde:Der Club der toten Dichter es:Dead Poets Society fr:Le Cercle des poètes disparus io:La frequento di desaparita poeti id:Dead Poets Society it:L'attimo fuggente hu:Holt költők társasága nl:Dead Poets Society ja:いまを生きる pl:Stowarzyszenie Umarłych Poetów pt:Dead Poets Society ru:Общество мёртвых поэтов (фильм) sv:Döda poeters sällskap