Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society (in Spain, El club de los poetas muertos; in Latin America, Dead Poets Society) is a 1989 film directed by Peter Weir, from a screenplay by Tom Schulman and starring Robin Williams. It narrates the meeting of a literature professor with a group of students during 1959 at the Welton Academy (Vermont), a flagship and prestigious institution.

Won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. An adaptation of the original screenplay was published in 1991, in novel form, written by editor Nancy H. Kleinbaum.

Plot

A new year has arrived at the elitist and conservative Marta school, where a new teacher appears, John Keating. While they wait for the introduction of the new professor, he asks them to leave the classroom and in the hallway he quotes a poem that Walt Whitman dedicated to President Abraham Lincoln: "Oh Captain, my Captain." Shortly after, he refers to the class of a first generation student and indicates that he has not understood the concept of carpe diem and that now, from the afterlife, he asks the new students not to lose what they can never recover: time. In class, the teacher asks them to look at the coordinate chart that the introduction to the book uses to define poetry, and calls it "garbage" and tells them to tear out that page because his conception of poetry is that it has no structure, no rules. It's about creating and thinking about something, giving it the emphasis it needs and breaking the mold.

At this introduction, the four friends are interested in finding out who their strange teacher is and, through his yearbook, find out that he was part of the "Dead Poets Society". Asking him directly in the schoolyard, he explains that the group met in the cave they called India and wrote poetry, thought freely and expressed their emotions through "verbose that flowed like sap from a wounded tree." ». The boys decide to create a new Dead Poets Club and, led by Neil Perry, sneak into the cave one night and start a ritual: one that reflects on the fact that the cave is free from society's prejudices and not there is no one to oppress them. They start to like poetry and continue to meet in the cave. Neil Perry, who has always wanted to be an actor and who has always remained under the tight control of his father, achieves the leading role in a Shakespearean play at his expense. Young Todd Anderson manages to lose his shyness through poetry. Knox Overstreet proposes to a young woman no matter what might happen. While Charles Dalton invites two girls to the cave and signs a "rebel" in the academy magazine proposing the entry of women into the school with "the club of dead poets". After all this, he comes up with a pseudonym for him: Nuwanda.

Despite everything, Neil can't bring himself to speak to his father. Instead, he lies to the teacher, telling him that his father seems okay with him starring in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and taking the opportunity to be an actor. On the day of the premiere, however, his father arrives at the theater and after the play not only does he not congratulate him but tells him that he will be taken out of the academy and sent to a military institution to study medicine and that only then will he be able to choose your destiny. Consequently, he decides to place the crown that he had used in the play on the window to commit suicide with his father's revolver. Before the death of the young man; all but one of his classmates blame his father, but the institution decides to blame "rogue" literature professor John Keating. When the teacher leaves, more than half of his students climb on their benches and say "Oh captain, my captain." Touched, the teacher responds with a "Thank you, guys, thank you."

Cast

Production

The screenplay was written by Tom Schulman, based on his experiences at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was particularly inspired by an unconventional English teacher named Samuel Pickering.

Initially they wanted to shoot the film in the city of Rome (in the state of Georgia), but finally it was decided to change the filming location to the state of Delaware, since the climate of the area offered natural snow and thus saved the problem and the expense of having to make the large amount of artificial snow necessary to achieve a good recreation of the student campus, although in reality the work was set in the state of Vermont.

Reception

The film grossed $235 million worldwide with only production costs of $16 million. Therefore, it can be said that the film was a smashing success. It was also more successful internationally. than in the United States, its country of production, and was also appreciated more by critics abroad than in the United States.

Awards

Oscars

• BAFTA
  • BAFTA to the best movie
    • 1990 · Peter Weir, Tony Thomas, Paul Junger Witt,...
  • BAFTA to the best original music
    • 1990 · Maurice Jarre
• Cesar
  • Caesar to the best foreign film
    • 1991 · Peter Weir
• David de Donatello
  • David de Donatello to the best foreign film
    • 1990 · Peter Weir
• NME Award
  • NME Award to the Best Film
    • 1989 · Peter Weir

References in culture

• The politician Pablo Iglesias inspired the scene of the "Oh captain my captain" to recreate it in his first class as a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid.
• In the movie Trois Couleurs: Rouge by Krzysztof Kieślowski (1994) the protagonist manifests her partner in a telephone conversation to have seen in the cinema Dead Poets Society.
• In How I Met Your MotherIn the "Robin 101" chapter, Barney quotes the film and then gets to argue with Ted about how good it is.
• In One Tree Hill, in chapter 18 of the seventh season "The last day of our relationship", Mouth describes feeling as one of the young people of the film, eager to get up to his pupitre and pull the pages out of a book.
• In the series The SimpsonsIn the chapter Special Edna mentions that this film has destroyed a generation of educators. The title of the Dead Putting Society episode is in reference to Peter Weir's film.
• In the series Family FatherIn an episode in which Brian's character is hired as a teacher, in the end students parody the last scene of the film with the phrase "oh captain, my captain".
• In the series The Serranoin an episode in which the dismissal of Fernando, the psychologist, is raised, due to budget cuts. Guille has the idea of climbing to the pupitre and the other students who imitate the famous scene go up, all of them, to their pupitres while repeating "Oh psychologist, my psychologist" as a sign of support for the fired. This performance by the students makes the director of the centre retrain.
• In one of the last chapters of the series House M.D., House quotes the film and the phrase "Carpe diem"; curiously in this film acts Robert Sean Leonard who also acts in the series, interpreting the best friend of House, who at that time suffered from cancer.
• In the movie Hook, one of the "lost children," Tootles, yells at Robin Williams the phrase "enjoy the moment."
• In the series Glee Dalton Academy students wear a uniform very similar to that of students in the film.
• In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.In chapter 8 of the second season, Agent Triplett greets Coulson saying "Oh captain, my captain."
• In the game "Destiny: Iron Lords" search and removal missions of fallen captains are called "Oh captain, my captain."
• In the "The Goldberg" series when Beverly becomes a substitute teacher she does it after seeing this movie, inspired by this teacher. And at the end of the chapter when this comes out of the class your son gets on top of the chair and says the mythical phrase: "oh captain, my captain"