Revisit: Dead Poets Society

A Touchstone pictures release 1989

Directed by Peter Weir

Written by Tom Schulman

English professor John Keating (Robin Williams) inspires his students to love poetry and seize the day.




Before he donned a white coat and sickened audiences with extreme saccrine in Patch Adams, before he won an Oscar for portraying the hard-nosed mentor to Matt Damon's genius janitor in Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams tackled another inspirational role of sorts in this 1989 drama about prep-school students who step out of themselves and 'seize the day'. Something about dramas from the late 80s/early 90s make them so unmistakibly from that time period; the film hasn't aged poorly, per se, but you can tell that it's from that period right away. The script is good but not great (you can see a lot of the 'conflict' coming from a mile away), and Williams gives a surprisingly good, restrained performance (something he isn't very well known for, especially in such overly-affecting fare). One of his better films.