Dead Poets Society is a 1989 drama about an English teacher who inspires his students to look at poetry with a different perspective of authentic knowledge and feelings.
You’ve surely seen this classic film with Robin Williams, he playing a new English teacher at an all-boys prep school in New England. As John Keating, he subverts traditional poetry teachings with his class in hopes of lifting their young minds from the conformist machine per se, demanding they seize the day, or in the Latin phrase said often in the film: carpe diem.
One of his students is Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), a bright enthusiastic student who is hungry for inspiration and more so, direction. He has his whole life been forced along a very specific path by his demanding father (Kurtwood Smith), feverishly guiding his son to become a doctor. That means no extra-circular life for the young man, his pursuits only in service to that goal and nothing else. Obviously, it’s left him frustrated and angry, like many of the boys at the academy, unable to explore their own interests.
Neil has longed to be an actor, naturally, something his father has adamantly refused he be part of, like so many other artistic joys. Neil, to this point, has been obedient to these rules, obliging his father in living out the opportunities his dad never had. That is until English class under the direction of Mr. Keating.
It’s here where Neil and several of his classmates discover that their new teacher is unlike any they’ve had before, challenging the boys to think outside the box. Keating’s intent is to open their minds and take hold of their lives, but unintentionally creates a dynamic among them that seeds larger rebellion (one of the boys strives for girls to be admitted to the school, pretending, during an assembly, that God himself is calling to make it so).
With Neil, Keating’s passion convinces him to secretly try out for an open audition for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and unsurprisingly, he gets a lead role, that of Puck, a mischievous woodland sprite. Driven by the acceptance, Neil pushes forward, lying to his father and forging a letter in his name saying he is able to participate. He even lies to Keating. This is the power of a dream come true.
So, we’re heading into major spoilers now and if you’ve not seen the film, then do so to avoid knowing part of the movie’s ending here.
As things happen in stories like this, Neil’s secret is not long kept and soon enough, his father learns of his son’s acting, demanding he cut loose from the play, even though it opens the following night. In a tense moment, Neil finally relents and agrees to do so, listening to his father tell him of his own struggles to give his son all that he has. It’s a crushing moment but one that actually handles the father’s ambitions well, making sense of his heavy demands.
Of course, we know that Neil won’t follow through, and believing his father will be out of town anyway, decides to go on stage. And, more like how movies work, while he’s giving what amounts to a fantastic performance, his father enters the auditorium and stares in disbelief at Neil’s betrayal, though says nothing while the play continues. When the curtain comes down, the crowd cheers and even Neil thinks maybe his father will finally see that there is more to his son than the doctor he is shaping him to be. Not so.
Rushed away in anger, Neil’s father is furious and at their home, tells him he is withdrawing him from the school and placing him in a military academy to prepare for Harvard, crushing any hope of acting out of Neil. It stuns the boy, his future now a ten year path of demands and personal loss, his dreams now forever cast to the abyss.
You know what happens next. That night, with the household asleep, Neil, cornered and feeling no possible way of escape, decides to end his life. We watch as he strips off the clothes that identify him and for one brief moment don again the twig wreath crown he wore as Puck on stage, standing in front of an open window in the clutches of a bracing winter wind. It is a last moment of freedom.
But look closer at this image and you will find in the corner of the shot, in the shadows of the next window, a globe in Neil’s room. It too faces the chill night and symbolic of its owner’s emotional state, is tilted so the world is upside down. It’s a small symbolic image that is probably missed by most, rightfully caught up in the coming choice Neil will make, but I love the subtlety of it all, in a movie that is all about expression and finding one’s path, to see how in his mind, in his world right then, everything is not how it is for everyone else.