Carpe Diem!

Rating: Null/10 (19 August 1999)

There are several lessons to be learned in Peter Weir's "Dead Poets Society," and while I could go into all of them here, the film teaches them far more eloquently than I ever could.
The movie also has several layers. For instance, there is Professor John Keating (Robin Williams). He's the new kid on the block, the teacher nobody quite trusts. He's willing to try absolutely anything to reach his students, and he does. As I watched Keating work his magic, I was reminded of all my greatest teachers, and it is obvious that Keating is largely taken from real life. Writer Tom Schulman only made up part of him, because there really are teachers as powerful and as daring as him. I've had many of them.
There are also the students played by Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, and others. They are accustomed to book teachers, those who move through a text simply for the sake of doing it, with little or no concern for whether the students grasp any of it or not. Then they meet Keating, with his suggestions for changing our points of view, and his cries of "Carpe Diem!" Of course they change. They really have very little choice in the matter.
I refuse to spoil the ending. I will only tell you that it will blindside you if you have a heart, that you will realize all in one fell swoop that the teaching worked, that the students learned something, and, in the process, you learned a lot too.
**** out of ****.