Saturday, February 03, 2007

These Poets Are Not so Dead

I was going through folders at work and came across one marked “Backups”. It contained several old files that I had completely forgotten about. I thought I’d share a couple of them with whatever readers might still check this blog.

This is an assignment for an English class I took a few years ago. Enjoy!

These Poets Are Not so Dead

1 There seems to be much confusion regarding the movie Dead Poets Society. This confusion stems from the placement of Robin Williams’ name at the head of the cast, when his character plays nothing more than a supporting role in the film. Many noted experts and critics have wasted wads of paper picking apart his performance, while all the time missing the real point to the movie. It is not about Williams’ Professor Keating. Nor is the key conflict between Neil and his father, as some have suggested. The father and Professor Keating are both catalysts to, not participants of, the central story. At its heart, Dead Poets Society is about two young students named Todd Anderson and Neil Perry

2 Neil, played by Robert Sean Leonard in the best performance of his career, is an outgoing, charismatic student who has everything going for him. Todd, played by the incomparable Ethan Hawke, is just the opposite; he’s shy, reserved, and timid. Their lives are jostled by the entrance of Professor Keating, a new English teacher, played by a remarkably subdued Williams, whose lessons on questioning the world around them bring about a weaving juxtaposition of the boys’ lives. Strong willed Neil badgers the unwilling Todd into joining a secret society, and Todd tumbles along in Neil’s unflappable wake. Yet this same irrepressible nature leads Neil into a confrontation with the one man he cannot win against – his overbearing father.

3 The tragic ending to Neil’s dilemma brings the two boys’ circle to a completion. In the end, the irrepressible Neil cracks and succumbs to despair, and it’s the meek and mild Todd who proves to be the stronger of the two.

4 Noted critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times spends much time berating the realism of the film. When Professor Keating adopts the diction of John Wayne and Marlon Brando, Ebert sees it only as Robin Williams slipping from his character and improvising a stage act. But what better way for a teacher to reach an audience of teenagers who couldn’t care less about poetry than to link the subject to their heroes of stage and screen? Williams’s characterizations of Brando and Wayne were completely valid within the context of a teacher trying to reach a youthful audience of the fifties. At another point, Ebert writes, “The society's meetings have been badly written and are dramatically shapeless, featuring a dance line to Lindsay's ‘The Congo’…”(C2)[1] They’re teenagers! Of course they make a dance out of a catchy refrain! What would be more natural? The boys aren’t in this for the poetry – they’re in it for the rebellion.

The writing in this film is remarkable for its reality and depth. When Professor Keating exhorted the boys to “seize the day” and “make your lives extraordinary”, I wanted to turn off the movie and start doing something more meaningful with my day right then. Only popcorn and laziness kept me on the couch.

Not all parts of the film work as smoothly as the main flow. There is a clunky romantic side story between Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles) and a girl from the local public high school that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing except to fill space and time. Many of the lesser characters are basically moving background pieces, stereotypical characters who exist solely to fill in just because it would look weird for the school to have only four students.

These minor setbacks do not detract from the emotional validity of the film as a whole. There is a powerful lesson taught in this film, and an insight into the human psyche that strikes very near the core of our own reality.