Style: Coming-Of-Age Drama
Director: Peter Weir
Starring: Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Kurtwood Smith
Operating Time: 128 minutes
Synopsis: In New England of 1959, Welton Academy is a stuffy personal college for boys, emphasizing custom and self-discipline. John Keating (Robin Williams) is the brand new and free-spirited poetry instructor, encouraging his college students to grab the day and assume independently. His college students are impressed to recreate a secret poetry-loving membership and begin to take a look at boundaries. Neil (Robert Sean Leonard) defies his strict father (Kurtwood Smith) and joins a theatre group; Knox (Josh Charles) pursues an unlikely romance; Todd (Ethan Hawke) regularly comes out of his shell; and Charlie (Gale Hanson) shocks the varsity neighborhood with an unacceptable demand.
What Works Effectively: The central anti-conformance message is liberating, and right here delivered with the confidently smiling gentle contact of Robin Williams in one in all his greatest performances. His John Keating was himself a pupil at Welton, and so the deliberate problem to the established order comes from a spot of data. Keating’s moments of unorthodox instructing, together with connecting with photos of scholars previous, instilling confidence to stroll independently, prodding Todd to find the poetry inside in entrance of the category, and introducing a special perspective from atop the desk, all register with breezy profundity. Robert Sean Leonard and Ethan Hawke convey the rigours of maturity transformations with convincing fragility, whereas director Peter Weir and cinematographer John Seale increase the drama with some fantastically captured imagery in and round Welton Academy.
What Does Not Work As Effectively: Keating’s largely clean backstory nudges him extra in direction of an emblem slightly than an individual, and one of many boys’ tales dominates the ultimate act, leaving a number of free ends. A few of the scenes (together with the outsiders dropped at the Lifeless Poets Society cave and a number of the soccer pitch sequences) simply add pointless padding.
Key Quote:
Keating (whispering forcefully): Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.
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