Robin Williams’ cult role in Peter Weir’s drama about teenage rebellion.
The arrival of a freethinking teacher to the prestigious boys’ academy makes students reconsider their views and revive the once-existing secret literary society. Dead Poets Society’s semi-autobiographical screenplay earned playwright Tom Schulman an Oscar and legendary composer Maurice Jarre received a BAFTA for Best Original Film Score. With his name previously associated with comedic parts, starring as literature teacher John Keating revealed Robin Williams’ great potential as a dramatic actor, while the monologue “O Captain! My Captain!” immortalized Walt Whitman’s poetry.
Australian Peter Weir's interest in various communities, be it a girls’ boarding school (Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975), a tribe of indigenous Australians (The Last Wave, 1977), or an Amish village (Witness, 1985), is also explicit in the most famous film of his American period featuring many future stars as academy students. Robert Sean Leonard in the tragic role of Neil Perry would become a theater actor and win a Tony Award, while Josh Charles, who plays the romantic Knox Overstreet, is a twice Emmy nominee for the legal drama series The Good Wife. The most famous is obviously Ethan Hawke though, whose character Todd Anderson is nominally the protagonist of the film—a stereotypically humble person, undergoing a transformation through the course of the plot. Hawke would become a youth icon of the 1990s, a renowned drama actor (First Reformed, 2017), director (Blaze, 2018), and TV series creator (The Good Lord Bird, 2020).
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Dead Poets Society
Dir. Peter Weir
USA, 1989. 128 min. 6+
