I know Dead Poets Society has become one of those movies that people sometimes make fun of for being overly sentimental or perhaps a little too fond of its own message. Well, this is social media. Apparently nothing is allowed to remain beloved for too long. 🙂

I would not say that I adore every single thing about this movie either, but I still think it deserves a place here.

A big reason is simply poetry.

I studied literature as part of my degree, I write poems myself, and there really are not that many popular movies where poetry, especially classical poetry, is allowed to be this central. Dead Poets Society somehow managed to make Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Robert Herrick and discussions about what poetry means part of a movie that became known by people who might otherwise never have opened any of them. Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! even becomes almost a language of its own between Keating and his students.

And then there is Robin Williams.

I already wrote something similar about Good Will Hunting, but there is just something about seeing him on screen that makes me feel good. Even his face gives me this strangely comforting and positive feeling.

There is one scene I especially wanted to leave here. Keating talks about why people still need poetry even though medicine, law, engineering and all those other things are necessary for life. Then he quotes Walt Whitman’s O Me! O Life! and ends with the idea that life is this ongoing play and each person gets to contribute a verse.

“The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.”

And then:

“What will your verse be?”