A Great Film, Making Me Want To "Carpe Diem"

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2016)

Dead Poets Society is directed by Peter Weir and is the story of a group of boys that attend a boarding school called Welton Academy, in the 1950's. These boys' futures have all been planned out by their rich parents, and are basically bred to be nothing short of lawyers and doctors. Eventually, their English teacher leaves the school, and is replaced by a new teacher, named Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams. Keating teaches them how to do something that they've never known before: how to live. He tells them to "Carpe Diem," or seize the day, so that they can live their own lives, not their parents.
Dead Poets Society is considered one of Robin Williams' best movies, and I can't see why it's called this. Now, he does good in the film, yes, but it isn't his movie. Although he is casted as the main character, he's not. He's really the mentor of the film, and the main character is provided through the boys, whose variety of personalities gives every audience member someone to relate to in one way or another. I wouldn't call this movie a Robin Williams movie at all, because it's an amazing stand alone film, that just happens to feature Williams as a supporting character.
Now, the above paragraph shouldn't stop anyone from thinking this is a good film, because it surely is. The movie has many underlying themes, the main one being to Carpe Diem, which is a quote I've been familiar with for a long time. I've known what this means for a while now, yet this movie still affected the way I view the common phrase. I say common because one may hear this a lot, whether it be from friends, family, or by seeing it on a cheap wooden plaque that hangs on the wall. However film provides a whole new perspective (another big theme in Dead Poets Society) to the "common" phrase. This movie takes the saying and applies it to many things, including poetry, future goals, and just regular things that happens as a young man, told excellently through the characters.
This movie has many great things to offer, including the direction, most of the acting, the script, and the amazing symbolism, as described above. However, one thing I feel that most people have somewhat swept under the rug about this film is the villainous characters in the movie. Debatably the main villain is the headmaster of Welton, Mr. Nolan, played by Norman Lloyd. Now, Mr. Nolan operates the school, and all of the staff and students within it, limitlessly, without restrictions. If he wants something to happen, it happens. If he wanted a student to be expelled, they were expelled. If he wanted a teacher fired, they were fired. That's probably how Mr. Keating became a teacher there in the first place. Now, if I attended Welton, I would be walking on eggshells all the time no matter what. However, if I had a headmaster with the likes of Mr. Nolan, I would wet my pants every time I passed him in the hallway. This guy would scare the crap of me, especially if I knew that he could just expel me anytime that he felt it was a good idea. This is a big element in the movie that I feel isn't mentioned the way it should be, and I was glad to see a great villain in a great film, since that's somewhat rare nowadays.
The other positive I'll mention is the characters. The characters, mostly of the boys, were amazing characters. Although I didn't love all of the actors, I think the script paid amazing homage to the type of young men they were, and made them very relatable. In one way or another, I could relate to every single one of the boys in the movie, from quiet Todd (Ethan Hawke), to gregarious Charlie, nicknamed "Nuwanda" (Gale Hansen). The only casting choices I didn't completely approve of was that of Josh Charles as Knox Overstreet, who, I felt, could've done better as this character. For those who haven't seen it, Knox's main issue is his utter infatuation with a beautiful girl from a public school, named Chris, played by Alexandra Powers. Being a pubescent boy "in love" with this girl, I thought he could've done better, or have been replaced completely.
Now, the one big negative I have with Dead Poets Society is the, well, the Robin-Williams-isms throughout this film. Not that Williams does bad, but he seemingly has to slip in his personal qualities into the character of Mr. Keating, such as doing funny impressions of John Wayne and Marlon Brando while citing a serious quote from Shakespeare. Now, I'm no kill joy, and I understand it was written for comic relief, but there was enough funny parts slipped into Keating's interactions with the boys, that the characteristics of Robin Williams himself didn't need to be mixed into the concoction of Mr. Keating's character. This also caught the viewer a bit off guard, when a serious scene suddenly busted into the boys laughing a joke that wasn't all that funny, which took away from the realism of the movie.
In short, Dead Poets Society is an amazing film, with great acting, characters, a good script, and fantastic underlying themes that compels the audience to go out there and "seize the day."