The capacity for young people to find themselves and flourish is countered by the chilling potential for them to destroy themselves, or to be destroyed by a large and at times brutal world. Like Weir’s other film based in and around an exclusive private school, the more enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock, education is viewed as a pivotal but dangerous experience. As a much older adult, Dead Poets Society affects me more as a story about the qualities of inspiration itself: the potential for our words and actions to move and motivate people around us. As a high school student I remember feeling inspired by it in the obvious ways: to appreciate the creation and consumption of art, and, in my case, to continue pursuing a passion for writing. It is one of those films that means different things at different points in your life. It has grown in stature over the years, spawning a spin-off stage play and novel, as well as being a common text on school curriculums and in lists of inspirational movies, such as this from the American Film Institute. Photograph: Touchstone/Kobal/REX/Shutterstockĭead Poets Society was a hit at the box office and collected plenty of kudos – including a Bafta award for best film and an Academy award for best original screenplay (it was nominated for three others: best picture, best actor and best director). Learn what the captain and the ship symbolize from this. 0:00 / 1:42 O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman (read by Tom O'Bedlam) SpokenVerse 124K subscribers Subscribe Subscribed L i k e 1.1M views 14 years ago According to Walt Whitman, this is. Robin Williams as the enigmatic and unconventional teacher John Keating in Dead Poets Society. Symbolism and imagery in O Captain My Captain are key for understanding of the poems meaning. But there’s a lovely synchronicity here between real-life and Keating’s objectives, given the teacher’s passion for finding ways to keep poetry relevant and exciting for younger generations. Poetry purists might turn their nose up at the idea that some people, maybe even most people, now associate Whitman’s verse first and foremost with a movie rather than a poem. There is something beautiful and yet profoundly melancholic about this cycle: poetry celebrated through film, then film celebrated through social media, with real-life tragedy and great outpourings of grief and affection at the core of it all. When, in August 2014, the hashtag #ocaptainmycaptain went viral for the first time (the film was pre-social media and so, of course, was Whitman’s poem) the context was again tragic, following the death by suicide of Williams himself. The poem was written in 1865 and is in the public do. This moment takes place in the shadow of tragedy, after the heads of a conservative private school unfairly blame Keating for the suicide of one of his students. I wrote and recorded music to Walt Whitmans poem 'O Captain My Captain' to help people memorize it. Photograph: Touchstone/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock But one of his most memorable shows for me would have to be the Dead Poets Society where Williams in the role of John Keating taught me about the latin word Carpe Diem, or seize the day, and brought me down Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled.”Īnd it is only befitting that this week’s tribute to Williams would be Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”, one of the most notable poems from that movie.Members of the Dead Poets Society gather. I grew up watching Williams shows, an almost unavoidable encounter because my local TV channels are constantly broadcasting re-runs of Jumanji and Flubber that he became part of my childhood memories. Everyone’s funnyman Robin Williams passed away at the start of this week at the age of 63 leaving the world in disbelief and shocked by his passing.
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