Peter Weir’s school drama is moving enough to earn its sentiment, with Robin Williams and the young cast doing the difficult work. The moral lessons are too tidy, but we recommend it for the performances.
Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society is a moving school drama, despite a script that sorts its adults too neatly into right and wrong. John Keating teaches boys accustomed to being told how to live, and offers poetry as a reason to think for themselves. Tom Schulman’s screenplay understands the appeal of an adult who takes young people’s inner lives seriously. We recommend it for the care with which Weir and his cast make that attention feel important, even when the writing becomes too certain of everybody’s place.
Williams is crucial, and his restraint is the film’s most useful surprise. As Keating, he makes an eccentric teacher seem approachable without making him harmless. The charm has a purpose: we can believe that these boys would listen to him and risk trying something unfamiliar. Schulman also keeps the pupils at the centre, giving their responses to Keating room to matter. Williams accepts that supporting function with a grace that keeps his charisma from swallowing the film.
Robert Sean Leonard and Ethan Hawke give the film much of its emotional force. Leonard makes the boys’ appetite for a less prescribed life seem urgent, while Hawke lets encouragement register with a hesitation that is painful to watch. We were moved by that hesitation: Williams encourages him, and Hawke makes accepting the attention look difficult. Weir is patient with both actors, allowing their responses to carry scenes that could have become illustrations of a good teacher’s wisdom.
John Seale’s cinematography makes the school attractive enough that we understand why its authority might go unquestioned. The carefully lit images occasionally seem too flattering, but they give the boys’ surroundings a persuasive appeal. Wendy Stites’s production design reinforces the school’s formality, making its resistance to change feel credible. The shots of birds are a more mannered touch. Weir is persuasive enough about school life without asking the surroundings to become mysterious.
William M. Anderson’s editing is attentive to the young cast, giving their responses to Keating enough weight to keep the lessons from becoming solo performances. The pace suits a story in which encouragement needs time to take effect. Maurice Jarre’s score supplies warmth, though it sometimes presses too hard on feelings the actors have already made clear. Across 129 minutes, the classroom exchanges remain absorbing because Weir keeps our attention on what the boys make of their teacher.
The writing is less generous to those who resist Keating’s influence. Schulman’s emphasis on parental hostility to artistic ambition gives the boys a recognisable obstacle, but can make an adult’s whole character seem reducible to disapproval. The romantic pursuit subplot is another weakness: it asks us to indulge behaviour because it belongs to a young man discovering himself. That is too easy an excuse, and the film’s sympathy for its boys needs more scrutiny there.
As an inspirational-teacher drama, it is unusually interested in how the pupils receive the inspiration. Leonard and Hawke make the invitation to think independently feel consequential, and Williams gives them someone worth listening to. We would have preferred less insistence from the script and score. Go for the actors, and allow yourself to question a few of the lessons.
