Life is like a movie if you stop to look at it long enough. Each person plays their individual role, has their own plot, and the setting is constantly changing. They each add their own layer to make it all work. However, it's so much more than that; it's this complicated being that seems hard to put down into words or sounds for that matter. It's all the details in one complicated "something." Forgive my ambiguity and lack of a better word than something, but is that not a thought that happens at some point? Life sure is something? At any rate, Weir's movie Dead Poet's Society encompasses this feel of knowing life is nothing without these elements.
One of the elements is the plot. This storyline keeps your interest in that it isn't the same old thing you see in movie after movie. It actually portrays teenagers" lives in something more than the stereotypical "party" films that you can find in every cinema you visit. Yet ironically, the movies" dependence on the all time great poets of the past is what makes it new. Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) is the new English instructor at a top of the notch New England prep school which by the way is extremely set on being traditional. Keating, however, is not, and bursts in with this sort of light which makes it hard for the students as well as the audience to take their eyes off of him. His ideals maintain the plot because they are ideas that one wishes to accomplish on an everyday basis such as "Carpe Diem." (Seize the Day!) He invokes thought, and challenges the institutionalized norms of our day for the sake of perspective and growth. His character brings life's layers to surface, and brings them out in all of its dimensions, though there are an infinite number of them. Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) an extremely shy student comes out of his shell due to Keating's encouragement. Without trying Keating brings a new chapter of the Dead Poet's Society (a group of students that honor great poets such as Whitman, Thoreau, and Frost) to life.
