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Movie Review: Dead Poets Society

“Oh Captain, my Captain!” words of the Dead Poets Society; an ambiguous word it is. “Oh Captain, my Captain!” Yawp of angry men fighting for what they believe in. The movie Dead Poets Society is set in 1959 at a fictional elite conservative Vermont Boarding School Welton Academy or as the students call it “Hell-ton” Academy.
            The movie expressed strong views upon the views of the students. Mr. John Keating, played by renowned actor Robin Williams, was inspired by the writer’s experiences. The script was written by Tom Schulman and he wrote it based on his experiences at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, particularly with his teacher, Samuel Pickering. There is also a scene in the original copy of the script wherein the audience was supposed to see mr. keating dying at a hospital but was later removed by the director himself, Peter Weir.
            The film debuted early June of 1989. It received great views and has had nineteen awards and eighteen nominations. The most prominent awards it has received are the Best Writing and Screenplay at the 1990 Academy Awards, Best Foreign Director at an Italian Journalism event, Best Film and Original Film Score at the BAFTA Film Awards, Top Box Office Films at the ASCAP awards, all in the same year. Also in 1991, it won the Best Foreign Film award at the César Awards in France. There are many more awards garnered by the film; the latest would be their 2016 awards.
            Personally, the movie does have room for improvements. The beginning of the film was too slow and contained many dead air scenes that could have been left out without sacrificing the story of the film, honestly it did make me fall asleep due to slow progress. The climax and falling action, along with the denouement, felt too fast. It ended quickly which made me feel like there was supposed to be more to it. It felt like something was missing.
            For the technical aspect of the film, considering it was made back in 1989, the cinematography was good enough. The actors were fairly good, I just hoped for a better exposure for all the characters. They brought in more characters than what they could expose. Some characters were too extra to be even given a name. I wish they could have given Meeks like a small part of the film where they could showcase his own story.
            Overall, the film was not that bad and it would depend on who is watching it whether it was outstanding, exceptional, fairly good, or bad. As for me, it was ok. It wasn’t the worst movie I have ever seen but definitely I‘ve seen better movies that are even older than this one.  I give it a six out of ten rating.

            Would I recommend this? I personally wouldn’t, but it depends on you. IMDb gave it a rating of 8.1 out of 10, and received an 86% rating from rotten tomatoes. Also for further understanding and analysis, there are adaptations of the movie as well; a novel with the same title whose author is N.H. Kleinbaum published in 1989, and a Broadway adaptation re-written by the original writer Tom Schulman and directed by John Doyle.

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