Enlightenment encounters discipline and tradition.

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 2017)

I saw this movie a couple of times over the years, it made an indelible memory. Especially the last scene where each boy, in turn, stood on his desk, defying orders from the old headmaster. Now I was able to watch it again on Netflix streaming movies.
This certainly is one of our landmark movies. Set in 1959 former student at the elite private boys high school, Robin Williams as John Keating, returns to teach. Classroom scenes focus on his poetry class. We find out from his photo in the old yearbook that he was a rebel of sorts, willing "to try anything", and perhaps it is a mystery why the staid old school, valuing discipline and tradition, hired him.
Keating's main focus is to get the young boys (all the actors were in fact teenagers during filming) to learn to think for themselves. Carpe diem. Seize the day. But that invariably runs up against school administration and some of the parents. When Keating was a student he was a member of an unofficial club "Dead Poets Society." Upon learning about this a group of his students on their own reestablish this club.
The tragic figure is Robert Sean Leonard as Neil Perry with a strict father who was determined his son would become a doctor. But his son really want to act and couldn't deal with what he was being forced to do.
A very young looking Ethan Hawke is shy Todd Anderson. And a very young Josh Charles who is still acting in TV, he was Will in "The Good Wife."
Fine movie with no easy answers but we are each encouraged to seize the day in our own lives. Sadly Robin Williams took his own life in 2014 at age 63.