Dead Poets Society (1989) * *

Directed by: Peter Weir

Starring: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard

 Dead Poets Society is meant as a deep film in which students at a stuffy prep school are taught to be themselves through an unconventional teacher and a love of poetry. Throughout the film, I keep expecting more.    When the film was over, I couldn't help but think, "Is that it?"

There are a couple of issues at work here that prevent Dead Poets Society from being successful. One is its star, Robin Williams, who for the most part isn't playing "Robin Williams" here, but a thoughtful young man who wants the best for his students. However, in a few scenes, Williams (as Professor John Keating), is allowed to lapse into his standup persona and it undermines the goodwill built up earlier.    He is introducing Shakespeare to his class and cracks them up with impersonations of Marlon Brando and John Wayne playing Shakespeare characters. Why was this necessary?    Did director Weir believe that audiences weren't ready for a shtick-free Williams? There are a few more scenes like this and it made me realize that Robin Williams was there on screen, not necessarily John Keating.    By the way, for a great shtick-free Robin Williams performance, see Good Will Hunting.

Second, a great deal of time is devoted to the Dead Poets Society, which the students learn Keating formed when he was a student at their prep school.    What do they do at their meetings? Well, the students read some poetry, dance, drink, and repeat those actions.   These scenes are formless, shapeless and don't really amount to anything.   Reading poetry is really not cinematic.   Throw in a campfire and some oddball behavior and you really have something non-cinematic.

Finally, Dead Poets Society doesn't succeed in reaching its ultimate goal, which is to move the viewer as these kids transform before our eyes from stuffy prep school kids into remarkable, independent individuals. This idea culminates in the final scene, in which Keating, thrown out of school for being held responsible for a student's suicide, gathers his personal items and is saluted by the students who all stand on their desks shouting, "O Captain, My Captain" (the Walt Whitman poem the students study earlier in the film).   If having the students express their own individuality was Keating's goal, he failed. Shouldn't each student say farewell in his own way rather than each standing on his desk?   That would drive the point home a lot more poignantly.

The film's screenplay won the Original Screenplay Oscar, which baffles me.    It beat out Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, which movingly and boldly told two dovetailing stories of the belief that we live in a Godless universe.  Dead Poets Society is a film of missed opportunities and good intentions.   It simply doesn't develop enough to be the thoughtful and stirring film it wants so desperately to be.