Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989)Huh, this movie turned out to be nowhere as good as I remembered it being
.
I remember watching this when I was about 16 and being pretty moved by it. It felt tragic and weighty and having spent my entire schooling in these strict schools that took conformity to an absurd level (happy to share traumatic anecdotes), this film spoke to me at the time.
Now that I'm (thankfully) grown up, this film just made me angry. It falls victim to the very thing it chooses to deride. It pretends to celebrate non-conformity and yet the film conforms to every cliche in the book. It's predictable and sappy and perhaps the most damning criticism of them all, bland and boring!
I had a lot of nagging issues with the execution - lots of scenes that just feel too contrived and ridiculous and don't feel remotely credible. But I could've forgiven all that if the film was at least interesting in terms of ideas. I thought for a while that it was. When Keating first comes into the classroom, he comes across as a rebel teacher who is opposed to the learning by rote, accepting what is in the books approach and instead seems to be asking his students to think for themselves and to pursue their passions. All well and good so far.
Somewhere along the line, we see Keating having a discussion with another teacher who questions Keating about whether these students are ready to handle so much freedom and independent thinking. When Keating accuses him of being a cynic, he refutes Keating by claiming that he's just being a realist. Aha, I said to myself at this point. This is why I liked the film so much. Now we're going to see these two opposing philosophies battle it out. Cool.
But no. The realist guy just pretty much drops out of the film after posing this question. Yeah, he's still around but just in a couple of scenes in the background. And this somewhat pragmatic and cautious philosophy is not what is set up as an opposition to Keating and his line of thought. Instead, we have these ridiculous villains on the other side. A headmaster who seems to be stuck in the past and a parent who seems cruel and uncaring (apparently a pattern with the kids at this school).
The last straw? Ultimately, by the time the movie ends, what we learn is that the realist guy.. remember? He was right after all! At least some of these kids don't yet have the emotional strength and maturity to be able to deal with following their passions with no regard for the consequences. There's one scene where Keating sort of mouths something about how one has to be self-preserving even as one follows one's passions but it really feels like it was stuck on.
I am really okay with that conclusion too and I think I would've still really liked this film if it had taken up this idea of a well-meaning teacher who inadvertently ends up encouraging his students to be too unfettered with tragic consequences. But the film doesn't do that either. Keating is still characterized as the heroic teacher who is made a scapegoat by the system.
I think I've already written too much about this film and I could go on and on with specific complaints about individual scenes. Keating's techniques come across as rather new-agey and I found myself rolling my eyes on more than one occasion. His approach seems to be to tease / mock the students about the very thing they are most embarrassed about. I guess it could work but what he does to Ethan Hawke's character felt a bit like harassment to me. That whole romance feels totally unnecessary and didn't do anything for me.
I am not a fan of Robin Williams most of the time and all his theatrical Brando impersonations while teaching Shakespeare didn't really help the cause either.
Thankfully, the movie has Wilson in it and he makes the whole thing a little more bearable but I'd much rather be watching an episode of House instead of this one.
It also has some
pretty photography. I'll give it that. Pity it doesn't deserve any of it.
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)Despite all the enthusiasm this film generated over at
smirnoff's brilliant marathon, somewhere in my head I wasn't yet convinced and believed that some of the love for this film is driven by nostalgia and that it's mostly a cheesy splatter fest.
One of the many reasons I love these brackets is that when I discover a film that I end up loving, it so easily outweighs the burden of having to watch these duds. This was no exception. This movie charmed the hell out of me.
It's absolutely schlocky and cheesy and typically 80s in its aesthetic and its also brilliant, funny, poignant and heart-wrenchingly romantic.
Yes, there is tons of ridiculous science in the film. Computers that are are ridiculously wise and respond in plainspeak.
Yes, the film is gory, gleefully and wonderfully so.
But all of this just made me love the film even more. Because underneath all this gore and all these special effects, the film manages to be so devastatingly sad without resorting to all the silly emotional manipulation of DPS. I've rarely seen a film examine such basic human fears while being so entertaining at the same time. Aren't we all, at some level, dissatisfied with and insecure about our own bodies? And don't we all wish (and maybe even think) that we have some control over this unpredictable machine?
I love the way Brundle's initial reaction to the changes his body undergoes after the reconstruction is to imagine that his body has been purified and improved. He decides that the hair growing on his back will finally give him the macho, masculine persona he has never been able to have in the past. And then as he starts to realize what is happening to him, the film taps into all these ideas about aging and illness and how we and the people we love respond to it. The spiral of extreme behavior and depression that Brundle seems to be going through as his body parts stop responding the way he expects them to is hardly science fiction!
And ultimately, it's just a really sad and really beautiful story about love and loss. And an infinitely better one than those silly movies where dead husbands leave letters lying around for their wives and what not.
It's also pretty much perfectly cast. I've always liked Jeff Goldblum for some reason but here his intensity, his tendency to seem self-absorbed, his nervous frenetic energy - they make him perfect for the role of Seth Brundle. Geena Davis is fine as well and she and Goldblum seem to share great chemistry (I read somewhere that they got into a relationship while making the film?).
The film that I expected to be touching and tragic made me want to tear my hair out in boredom. The film that I expected would make me roll my eyes ripped my heart straight out. This decision is too easy.
Goodbye,
Dead Poets Society.
