Peter Weir’s Dead Poets’ Society from 1989 starts with Todd Anderson starting the school

year at the Welton Academy, an elite, all-male and famous boarding school known for the
results achieved by their students. Todd gets assigned to Neil Perry as his roommate, thus
meeting his friends: Knox Overstreet, Richard Cameron, Gerard Pitts and Charlie Dalton.
As the year progresses, the new English teacher, Mr. Keating, uses a rather unorthodox
method of teaching English literature which does not fit with the standards of the academy.
Mr. Keating’s goal is to teach the kids to be free-minded and to live their lives on their own
terms. The English Teacher’s main message to the students is to seize the day, which appears
many times in the movie in the form of the latin expression: Carpe Diem.
Meanwhile Neil and his friends discover the Dead Poets’ Society, a society created by former
students of the boarding school including Mr. Keating. The friend group recreates it using
their own way, meeting in a cave in the forest in the middle of the night, smoking cigars,
playing on instruments and telling eachother stories, poems.
This behavior of Neil’s is not supported by his father who wants his son to attend medicine at
Harvard and become a doctor. Neil is one of the most promising students of the academy, that
is why he has a great chance and motivation to achieve his father’s dream, but discovering his
real passion, acting, makes him think different and trying to leave the path his father layed in
front of him with hard work. The son is constantly contradicting his father, but Mr. Perry has
a strong personality and does not let his son choose the wrong way. Neil resigns his dreams to
become an actor, but Mr. Keating encourages the student to follow his dreams. Neil takes part
in a play which his father forbade, but the son thinks Mr. Perry wouldn’t notice it. All of a
sudden Mr. Perry enters the theatre at the end of the play, which is the last drop, thus Neil
gets enrolled in a military school. The son cannot accept the decision of his father, which
leads to the sad ending of the movie, the death of Neil Perry.
Mr. Perry finds out about Mr. Keating’s unorthodox modalities of teaching, resulting in the
teacher getting fired from the school. While in the middle of an English class, Mr. Keating
enters the room to take his remaining stuff with him. In the last scene of the movie the former
teacher’s students stand up on their desks while in the middle of a class paying respect to
their Captain.
I think that the Dead Poets’ Society is a great movie to watch, not only providing an
adventurous, interesting plot, but also a very valuable and particular message which is not
presented by many films: to seize the day and live life on your own terms. Even though there
are some exaggerated parts in the movie where I think the moral of the movie is overdone it
can be quite instructive for young people who are yet before making big decisions, but also
for adults, because it may change their perspective of life.
My favourite part of the movie is the scene when Neil is taken home from school by his
parents and sitting in a room together with his father and mother. Mr. Perry tells Neil the
plans he has for him and Neil hardly can accept these, asking his father why doesn’t he take
his son’s opinion in consideration. Mr. Perry furiously asks his son what his opinion is, but
Neil doesn’t answer. It is my favourite part because it woke a lot of feelings in me and I
couldn’t decide whether it was the best decision the son made. It kept me thinking for a
while, but at the end of the day I think in that moment Neil made the right step to stay silent.