Tag: Film Criticism

Roger Ebert and I must be the only two people on the planet who didn’t like “Dead Poets Society” (1989). I mean I LIKED it, but in a sheepish sort of way. The film looks fabulous – all the lingering shots of geese and mists hovering over a perpetual autumn landscape of a fantasy campus, replete with stone buildings and leaded glass and classrooms with honest-to-goodness wooden desks, play to my innermost private-school yearnings.

But for all its cinematographic rewards, there’s something very cheap about it. The filmmakers can’t figure out how to represent visually the film’s alleged celebration of poetry as a transformative force, so instead they come up with vapid short-hand “solutions” like having the students steal away in the night for surreptitious meetings in a grotto, where they read by flashlight. None of them display any comprehension of WHAT they read, but they do indulge in other transgressions, like the smoking of cigarettes and… conga dancing? Really? This is not sucking the marrow out of life; this is just sucking. Walt Whitman, whom the screenplay repeatedly invokes, would never stop vomiting.

The film is totally paint-by-numbers. And I really resent the transparent button-pushing, as this “enlightened” band of rebel angels sticks it to the stuffed shirts. I don’t mind having my buttons pushed, but at least work at it a little bit! Otherwise I’ll just watch “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1939) or “Mr. Holland’s Opus” (1995), which at least earn their tears. Even “Animal House” has the decency to be what it is.

At any rate, I am resigned to the inevitable hail of brickbats as I engage in my annual screed against “Dead Poets Society” this week, on “Picture Perfect.” There aren’t very many films that set me off – my outspokenness about “The Lord of the Rings,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” and any number of superhero movies have all generated mail – and perhaps I should just shut up and play the music, but you know how it is. Some days you don’t have enough caffeine, or it’s 100 degrees outside, and you just get grumpy.

Plenty of people are grumpy, I’m sure, as they head back to school. I hope you’ll join me for music from movies with academic settings, including selections by Maurice Jarre (“Dead Poets Society”), Danny Elfman (“Back to School”), Richard Addinsell (“Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and “Tom Brown’s School Days”), and Michael Kamen (“Mr. Holland’s Opus”).

I’ll be in my grotto, ranting by flashlight, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Misery loves company: Roger Ebert eviscerates “Dead Poets Society.”

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-poets-society-1989