Dead Poets Society (1989)

Themes - Conformity, Rebellion & Individuality
Click the link in the title to watch the film

"Carpe Diem" is the line often quoted from the 1989 film Dead Poets Society to signify making the most out of life today. However for me the real theme of the movie is better encapsulated in the quotes by Thoreau and Frost on "walking to the beat of your own drum" and "following the path less travelled". A rebellion away from conformity towards individuality.

Robin Williams is cast in the role of John Keating, the idealistic new teacher at Welton Academy a conservative prep school during the late 1950s. The school is a milder version of the Bunker Hill Military Academy of Taps (1981), exacting control through "tradition, honour, discipline and excellence". In essence an expensive factory designed to process boys into men of standing and position at the expense of their uniqueness.

Keating's teaching methods allow his students to struggle against not only the school and its lifeless dogma but also family and society's convention. Unlike Kevin Kline's William Hundert in The Emperor's Club (2002), Keating is not interested in shaping the character of the boys he teaches but unlocking their potential.  Early in the movie he instructs his class to rip out the antiquated Introduction to Poetry in their textbooks which looks to take the soul out of the verse and replace it with a formula for understanding. This is much like the ethos of the school itself which seeks to remove the identity of the boys to supplant it with a tried and tested docility.

 "Rip it out"

The two main leads are played well by the then rising stars Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. Their forming of the Dead Poets Society being the central form of rebellion in the film, a midnight meeting group off campus, breaking school regulations while allowing the boys to read the great freethinking poets of the past and their own adolescent compositions to one another.

However the true rebel in the movie is not a student but Robin William's quixotic Keating, a free-spirited thinker who challenges the autocratic system in place and give the power of thought to his students. He is the polar opposite of Michael Redgrave's Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version (1951) , a man whose passion for teaching has been eroded by years of apathy from his students leading to a teacher of rote rather than reason.

Keating forms the midpoint in a trilogy of non-conformist characters played by Williams over a three year period starting with army disc jockey Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) to Dr. Malcolm Sayer in Awakenings (1990) . All three fight their prevailing systems (military, academia and medicine) to aid those within it. Williams is well able to embody the radical troublemaker effectively although his schizophrenic personality is toned down in each subsequent film. He is at his best as an actor when he is not playing for laughs but using comedy to flesh out his characters and tell a story.

 

In a memorable scene Keating takes Thoreau's quote from Walden and has the boys acts it out:

"If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away."


Having the self-concious boys walk around the school courtyard in their own style forces them to have awareness of their individuality much to the disapproval of the watching headmaster. Keating in the scene also quotes Robert Frosts poem The Road Not Taken:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

These quotes perfectly represent the concept of not accepting the majority voice as the absolute truth but instead putting yourself and your beliefs at the centre. For what good is life if it is half lived without creativity and freedom of choice and action.  

"Conformity"

However the power of freethinking that Keating gives to his student ends in tragedy. To fight against the system and society can be difficult for those unaccustomed to it. Keating is held responsible by the school for the loss due to the fear of the parents and staff of his methods, which have unleashed the raw potential in his students.

Alas, there is no Scent of a Woman (1992) defiance by the students when the headmaster looks for informers against Keating, all the boys of the Dead Poet Society sign, in effect, his expulsion papers. But the final scene does give hope that these young men will grow up with more than just honour and loyalty that the school demands. They will also have a heart and mind open to their own ideas and beliefs, they will never tamely believe or do what is told them but will seek out the truth as they find it.