I know, I know. This movie's already out of theaters. This review is late. Mea culpa. But I haven't seen Batman v. Superman yet, and besides, there's enough ink in that particular pool for now, I think. I'll watch it and let you all know what I think when there's a little less blood in the water.
In the meantime, I've decided that I don't do nearly enough with this wonderful website I bought, built, and (supposedly) run, and I'm semi-constantly immersed in (as I always have been) a plethora of cinema, so I'm going to see if I can review every film I watch for the rest of the year. Honestly, I don't see why not, and I could use the practice. Apparently if you get good at this sort of thing, it can be a "job."
So. In the parlance of our times: SPOILER ALERT
(Jesus, the movie was released in 1989.)
When Robin Williams died, I spent a week watching all of his films. At least, all the ones that were on Netflix, or in my collection. Good Morning Vietnam, World's Greatest Dad, Good Will Hunting, and so on. My friend Adam and I sat down and poured out our hearts about Williams in one of the best podcasts I think I've ever recorded. (Since Morning Word went dormant, the episode isn't up on the site anymore. I might re-release it as a Chat-Man and Robin in conjunction with this.) There was only one movie that I actually bought, in the wake of his suicide: Dead Poets Society. I found it on Vudu, saw that it was at least tangentially about poetry, and that was that.
I just never got around to watching it. I'd actually forgotten that I had it until Bird suggested it a few nights ago.
I loved it.
And I'm sure I would have loved it no matter when I watched it, or with whom. That said, I'm glad that I watched it with some distance between me and Williams' suicide. His death brushes a certain patina over all his films, now: pure comedy has become bittersweet, his dramatic turns lent more poignancy by actual tragedy. Try watching Bicentennial Man again. You'll see what I mean.
The hardest thing about watching Robin Williams in a post-Williams age is trying to leave the on-screen suicides on the screen. Watching Williams scream "All suicides go to hell?" in What Dreams May Come was powerful the first time I saw it. It's a heartbreaking moment. But it's difficult now to keep from crying straight through that film, and near-impossible to keep Williams' actual tragedy from coloring the context the writers and director had in mind. With absolute objectivity, World's Greatest Dad was pretty average: a watchable film with some good moments. But I first saw it the week Robin Williams hung himself. Watching him grieving over the body of his dead son--who accidentally hung himself--was devastating in a way that had nothing at all to do with the movie I was watching. Objectivity out the window.
But watching Dead Poets Society, I realized something: I don't live in a world where Robin Williams is a good actor anymore, tragically dead and lost forever. The dust from the titanic blow of his death has settled, and all around us are the amazing things he left behind for us to marvel at. Like Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, and Jimmy Stewart, Robin Williams was a good actor, but the wound has knit, and I'm not watching Eulogies anymore...I'm watching movies again. That patina, that poignancy will always be there now, but it isn't so overwhelming that the work gets lost beneath it.
I ran into my former poetry professor (and current guru) at the bar yesterday, and he said something that stuck in my head and changed my perspective on things. (That's literally all he does: blow your mind over and over again. Talking to him is mental vertigo.) He said, "Never make a decision based on Guilt or Shame. Life's too short. Make your decisions based on Love."
Which is weird, because that's basically the premise of Dead Poets Society. Williams plays Professor Keating, the new English professor at a buttoned-up, conservative private school. (Is there any other kind?) "Keating" is a nod to Romantic poet John Keats; indeed, the professor seems to identify with and admire the Romantics, and is--until the third act's tragic twist--a mercurial, puckish character. I found it odd that while Keating preaches the Romanticism of poetry, he actually teaches very little Romantic poetry. The poet Keating quotes most often is Walt Whitman, who is primarily a Realist. Most of the Romantic poems are read by his students, during their Dead Poets Society meetings, where they recite Tennyson, Byron, and Shakespeare. This dichotomy works well for the film, and helps add nuance to the broad-stroke tensions between the Students and the Establishment.
Early on in the film, Keating's anti-authoritarian lessons and encouragement of free-thinking catch the attention of Professor McAllister, who warns Keating against making waves. Keating accuses him of being a Cynic; McAllister replies that he's a Realist. Thus, the lines of the film are clearly drawn: the students, spurred out of the doldrums of a paint-by-numbers education by Keating's Romanticism, begin "sucking the marrow out of life," thinking for themselves, and letting themselves face and feel their emotions, thereby equating them with the Romantics. The Establishment--the gray, clockwork faculty of the school and the career-focused, empathetically-void parents of the students--are the Realists. Of course, the tension between the two groups is drawn in broad, moviegoer-friendly strokes...the students are creatures of whimsy and passion, full of vim, vigor, and hope, while all the adults are basically wrinkled old fogeys portrayed as being nothing so much as emotionally dead and so completely motivated by money, status, and success that they are literally impossible to empathize with. Heroes and villains.
Williams' Keating actually isn't in the movie as much as I thought he would be, but his presence rings throughout: Keating is the fulcrum upon which these two disparate groups teeter and weigh. Keating was once a student at the school, a firebrand free-thinker who raised hell and lived life. What we should also notice, though, is that he didn't retire to some garret over the Seine, drinking wine and scribbling poetry to beautiful women. He returned to the school and become a professor. While he lauds the Romantics and comports himself with the air of a Romantic, the poetry he returns to time and again is Realism, along with the practical, grounded verse of poets like Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost. Keating as a character is a liminality: he represents the space between the Students and the Establishment. Between Youth and Austere Adulthood: in fact, Keating is the only character of his age in the film, so far as I could tell: the old men are old, the students no more than fifteen, but Keating appears to be in his early thirties, poised, again, between the two. He is the middle ground. The third way.
The brunt of the film is spent, however, watching to see what side of the line Keating's class will fall on. (A young Robert Sean Leonard is brilliant as Neil Perry, but Ethan Hawke's Todd Anderson never really seems to develop as a character, though I suspect in the case of the latter, the writing is more to blame.) Some of the class is reluctant to let themselves step off the path to male-pattern baldness and stable careers, while some--Leonard's Perry the best example--dive headlong toward their dreams, finding the freedom the didn't know they were looking for in Keating's philosophy. While Hawke's Todd Anderson is ostensibly the protagonist, it's Neil Perry's journey I followed and fell in love with. It's also in his arc we find the root note of the film: let yourself be led by Love.
Perry follows his heart with wild abandon, deciding he wants to be an actor. Of course, Red Forman--I mean, Mr. Perry, played by Kurtwood Smith--fucks it all up, angry that his son won't be the clay for his vicarious sculpture. Again, a script complaint, but Perry's father rang so one-note to me ("Your mother and I have sacrificed a lot for you, you're ungrateful, you're going to be a doctor like I never could be blah etcetera blah") that it was hard to see him as a real person. His emotional disconnect from his son was hammered home every time he was on-screen. Still, watching Neil try again and again to get through to his father, to be brave, to follow his heart and trust in love, only to break and wither beneath his father's stoney glare was heartbreaking. The climax of the film, for me, is when Neil realizes that he can't be brave, can't stand up to his father, and recognizes that despite all his Romantic notions, he'll be trapped in the ruts of Reality until he's as old and gray as his father. Watch the moment when Neil's father confronts him with the prospect of military school: young as he is, Robert Sean Leonard's performance is absolutely masterful. You can literally watch as the passion, fire, and hope fades from his face, and an entire gamut of resignation takes its course. The totality of this moment of defeat and despair makes the famous final moment that much more emotional.
(Oh hell yeah: Bird and I cried several times during this movie. Not as much as we cried during Big Fish--Jesus, that movie is a knife in the feels--but still.)
Dead Poets Society is by no stretch of the imagination a perfect film, but there are few enough films that tackle poetry with such love and seriousness, without leaving you feeling emotionally gutted. (Sylvia, anyone? The Libertine?) The highest praise I can give is this: when the credits rolled, Bird turned to me and whispered, "Can we have our own Dead Poets Society?"
In today's world of screens and vapid, transient entertainment (I'm thinking Vines and compilations of cat videos), any film that stirs poetry, beauty, and Capital-A-Art back into our blood, even for a moment, is worth the time. These days, very little is, but Dead Poets Society deserves a watch, if only to remind you that there's a difference between living and being alive. To remind you of the importance of dancing, and of always being led by Love.