Dead Poets Society takes place in 1959 in a New England all-boys boarding school. Williams plays John Keating, a former student of the prestigious Welton Academy who has returned to teach the next generation how to not only love poetry, but also think on their own.
Keating's students include Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard, House M.D.), Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles), Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), Richard Cameron (Dylan Kussman) Gerard Pitts (James Waterston), Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) and new kid Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke). Besides being classmates at Welton, all of these boys have something in common, their parents pretty much have their lives all planned out for them, and until Keating comes into their lives, they were all going to follow that plan with little or no resistance.
Keating quickly shocks both the students and the faculty though when he breaks away from the standard teaching practices that have been governing the school for many years. Much to Headmaster Gale Nolan's (Norman Lloyd) dismay, it seems that Keating's unorthodox teaching techniques are starting to cause some problems in the school's status quo. Nolan seems to believe that each of these students' futures are laid out for them and future doctors, lawyers and bankers have no need to truly embrace and take in the literature Keating hands out.
Keating's teachings do have an affect on these select students. Perry has been forced to drop one of his extracurricular activities in order to focus more on school, but that small bit of resentment towards his father's decision is the first step in finding his own way, for good or for ill. When he and the others discover that Keating used to belong to an organization known as the Dead Poets Society, they ask the teacher about it and he explains that it was an unofficial gathering of students who would read and write poetry in order to "suck the marrow out of life." And with that knowledge, the Society is reborn.
Not only does Perry start looking for another passion to take up his time, but Overstreet falls for a girl at first sight and decides to be adventurous and seek her out. Dalton goes to an extreme and rebels in any way he knows how, while Cameron, Pitts and Meeks join in the festivities, but seem to stay out of the center stage. Anderson also seems to have his own troubles. The introverted student finds himself living in his older brother's massive shadow and while everyone expects great things from him, he doesn't see it in himself. One of Keating's biggest achievements in the film is getting Anderson to open up and come out of his shell.
Unfortunately, tragedy does eventually fall the newly-reconvened Dead Poets Society and when blame needs to fall, there is one place the school's governing board wants it to land. Like I said, this isn't a laugh-out-loud movie. It has quite a few sad scenes in it, but it is also a great inspirational film that teaches how to stand out and seize the day. I have fond memories of this film growing up and found that, while longer and a bit slower than I remembered, it's still a good story with a lot of lessons to be had.
While the picture and audio were noticeably cleaned up for the Blu-ray release of Dead Poets Society, something that is obvious when watching the special features, there isn't a whole lot about the film that screams high-definition. This release does come with a few special features, but oddly enough, I found myself not enjoying them as I normally would. There is a series of interviews with the cast looking back at the film and talking about working with Director, Peter Weir. Mind you, these interviews are several years old at this point so you can probabily find this same featurette on a previous DVD release. There are also a few deleted scenes and a featurette about the film's music. One extra that should be interesting to any aspiring filmmaker is "Cinematography Master Class" where the Director of Photography, John Seale, works out the many lighting conditions of the small bedrooms where many of the film's scenes take place.
As a fan of the film, I wouldn't hesitate to pick up Dead Poets Society on Blu-ray, just to have it in the latest media type, but that won't be the case for many people. If you haven't seen the film, but are interested, then I would recommend renting it first, just in case it rubs you the wrong way. From what I've learned over the years though, most people enjoy the film, even if they don't want to own it.
