Dead Poet Society Review essays

Dead Poet Society Review essays Only Robin Williams could manage to sneak a quick Marlon Brando impersonation into a tragic movie about boys becoming freethinking, independent men...and make it work. Williams distinctive humour is just one element of many that makes Peter Weirs latest creation, Dead Poets Society, a uniquely fresh film. It is a blend of wit, sentiment, pathos, and a feeling of nobility that separates Society from its peer coming-of-age flicks. The boys of the film, around the ripe age where blossoming normally occurs, are repressed by both their parents and their preppy boarding school. Enter John Keating (Williams) a mysterious character that appears to teach the boys English. Instead of grammar and composition writing, Mr. Keatings lessons deal with such topics as seizing life, the beauty of poetry, and individuality. The kids, presumably aching for a long time to break free, begin to rebel against their old lifestyles of tradition and discipline and expressing their rebellion by forming a n underground society to share beautiful poetry and art. What ensues is a struggle between the boys and all the authority figures, which eventually reaches awful proportions. This battle between the kids and their oppressors does have a few cliche moments such as when insert example here. The script narrowly avoids becoming trite and unnecessarily sentimental, however, as a result of the strength of several key scenes. Episodes in which Mr. Keating implores his students to make the best of their years, or that in which a normally introverted Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) composes an emotionally-baring poem in front of his peers, carry the film from beginning to end. Subplots, such as the ongoing scuffle between Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) and his father (Red, from That 70s Show) as well as Knox Overstreets girl-related antics and tomfoolery take the movie in several directions at once, and provide some unex...