Dps

The main philosophy I saw in the movie was that which I call the anti-romantic romanticist, which will be explained in greater detail within this site. To truly understand romanticism and realism as I am defining them, you MUST read my section on romanticism, realism, and DPS.

The purpose of this site is to present a series of case studies on the different characters in this movie in terms of their views on life. I believe that Todd is the main character - the only "anti romantic romanticist" - while Neil, Nwanda, and Knox are symbolic of what romanticism is, and while Neil's father, the school, and Cameron are symbolic of realism.

Anyway, I hope maybe because of this page, you'll look at this movie with a new perspective, or at least you will think about whether or not the movie truly embraces the "Carpe diem" philosophy of romanticism. I personally believe the true philosophy of "Carpe Diem" in the movie stems not from a romantic view, but from an existentialist view. I chose to describe it from a romantic point of view because I believe the movie constantly combats romanticism with realism, & existentialism isn't really touched upon. (I do, however, think Peter Weir did an excellent job with the Truman Show by portraying "Carpe Diem" in an existentialist philosophy. I personally think that movie is much more thought provoking than DPS, and emphasizes to a greater extent, living life to the fullest instead of limiting yourself to a minimal existence. Of course, the movie also is the ultimate case of paranoia which was actually real; it was a leap of faith to discover truth rather than accept deception; it was a play on the power of the media, and what people will do for money; and it gave a picture of what God may be like. I could go on and on...)

Dead Poets Society

(1989)

By Jim Emerson

Hopelessly riddled with paradoxes and contradictions, Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society is a numbingly conventional commercial formula picture that, incongruously, pretends to celebrate non-conformity. It's a film by the extraordinary Australian director Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, among others) that neatly trims its edges to safely and snugly into the Touchstone Pictures factory mold. The only thing surprising about this movie is that Weir has made something so bland and unadventurous.

Nevertheless, Dead Poets Society features Robin Williams' most convincing and restrained screen work -- effectively muting his compulsion to skip from one shtick to another, rather than limit himself to playing a single character -- even though those were the very anarchic impulses that made him a unique star in the first place. And, although Williams' name appears above the title, he's not really in it very much. So, another paradox: It's Williams' best movie work because he's the least like himself and he isn't onscreen long. Consequently, he doesn't have the opportunity to rip holes in the fabric of the movie with his familiarly distracting, manic attention-grabbing tricks.

Unfortunately, in the case of Dead Poets Society -- a sort of Stand and Deliver about wealthy, male, teenage Anglo-Saxons -- these paradoxes (except for the ones involving Williams) don't serve or enrich the movie, they just cause it to collapse upon itself.

Americans have traditionally maintained a romantic, love-hate relationship with the notion of nonconformity. Deep down, we each cherish an iconoclastic image of ourselves. American movies and literature are full of rebel heroes and heroines who reinforce that image, from Melville's Bartleby the scrivener and Hawthorne's Hester Prynne to Joseph Heller's Yossarian and John Irving's T.S. Garp. At the same time (as these characters attest), we sure do resent it when other people don't behave the way we think they ought to -- that is, "like everybody else."

"Carpe Diem, lads! Seize the day! Make your lives extraordinary!" new teacher John Keating (Williams) preaches to his pink-cheeked English lit students at Vermont's exclusive Welton Academy in the fall of 1959. Every school has (or ought to have) a John Keating. He's the outgoing, insurrectionary teacher who opposes the numbing, by-rote brainwashing methods of so much institutional book-learning and encourages his kids to follow their passions, to think for themselves -- his way, of course. When a stuffy introductory essay to a poetry anthology proposes a ridiculous method that reduces literature to a mathematical formula, whereby a poem's "greatness" quotient can supposedly be plotted on a graph, Keating denounces it as rubbish and commands his students to rip the introduction from the book.

He's fun. He cares. He half-jokingly (but only half-) tells the boys that literature was invented to woo girls. He does quicksilver impressions of John Wayne and Marlon Brando. He stands up on his desk -- to get a different point of view on things -- and tries to get his students to follow his example. When the kids dig up Keating's old school yearbook and find that their charismatic professor used to belong to a mysterious cult called the Dead Poets Society, he lets them in on the secret: It was a group of students who met in the ancient Indian caves nearby and read poetry -- their own as well as Walt Whitman's -- thereby causing girls to swoon. Keating makes poetry attractive to these boys by presenting it as an age-old seduction technique. (Well, the impulses behind Shakespeare's sonnets weren't all chaste.) Naturally, the younger generation chooses to emulate their idol.

An older, more experienced teacher questions whether 15- to 17-year-old kids are really ready yet to handle Keating's brand of freedom. "Gee, I never pegged you for a cynic," says Keating. "I'm not," says the other teacher. "I'm a realist." This smells like the set-up for a promising battle of philosophies, but Keating's sympathetic intellectual sparring partner promptly drops out of the movie, reappearing only occasionally and then as a mere background figure. (To a lesser extent, this is also what happens to Keating, who recedes after a couple of classroom scenes.)

So, the only forces opposing Keating's philosophy are rigid and towering ones, personified by Welton's stern, rigid, downright fossilized old headmaster, Mr. Nolan (Norman Lloyd), and the cruel, stubborn parent, Mr. Perry (Kurtwood Smith, who appears to be warming up here for his portrayal of Nazi war criminal Joseph Goebbles in an upcoming TV movie).