‘Poets’ Patronage Outclassing Summer Wisdom

The question was whether an intensely dramatic film could succeed against the slam-bang frivolities of traditional summer fare. The first returns indicate that the answer is a reverberating Yes.

Touchstone’s “Dead Poets Society,” with Robin Williams as a charismatic teacher at a stuffy and hidebound New England prep school in 1959, opened last Friday in a handful of theaters. But its business-per-screen for its first three days, as reported in Tuesday’s editions, was an amazing $42,000, far ahead of any of its competitors, including “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

Whether that kind of patronage will hold up as “Dead Poets Society” goes into wider release is not certain, because the film remains intense and dramatic. But it is a reasonable guess that enthusiastic reviews and equally enthusiastic word of mouth are going to make Touchstone’s gamble pay off.

The film industry’s conventional wisdom, which often seems more conventional than wise, will have to be re-evaluated. The notion that only the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy will work after Memorial Day clearly needs rethinking.

The point is that “Dead Poets Society” is an outstanding film for any time of year. What it does have in common with much summer fare is a strong appeal to a young target audience. Like so different a film as John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club,” it looks at teen-agers in their stressful relations with their parents and comes down strongly on the side of the teen-agers.

The Tom Schulman script, sensitively directed by Peter Weir, focuses less on Williams as the teacher than on the key core of his students. His electric preachings, in favor of independent thought as against rote-learning and the passive acceptance of dead-weight academic dogma, are inspiring stuff.

But the story is about the consequences of this stirring and liberating crusade. They are at first delicious and amusing and then deadly serious for both the boys and their teacher.

Freedom begets responsibility. Access to the family car is not the same as being able to negotiate freeway traffic. What the teacher opens up is not so much a can of worms as a treasury of mind-opening possibilities, but without a cautionary note that might have said the equivalent of “Use as prescribed.”

Williams’ characterization of Keating, the teacher, is remarkable in its shadings, from the serious, point-making clown to the serious man who must confront a situation that has got out of hand. The film’s shift in tone, from the rollicking first days to the darker confrontations with obsessive parents, a rigid bureaucracy and other social realities, creates an uncommon feeling of intellectual and emotional movement. “Dead Poets Society” has a lingering resonance.

The coming-of-age novel has been a staple in world literature almost as long as the novel has been a form, and the coming-of-age film similarly goes back to the early days of the medium. (Jackie Cooper in “The Champ” was coming of age the hard way.)

The pleasure of “Dead Poets Society,” and the final satisfaction for the viewer, is the feeling that, in the face of turmoil, some sharp disillusionings and a tragedy, the boys really have come of age. They’ve surrendered a reckless naivete, which is not quite the same as a loss of innocence. But they have found a new and mature courage toward the taking charge of their own lives and thought. And that, of course, was Keating’s dangerous but liberating theology.

You have the feeling that teachers, not less than students, and parents, not less than their teen-agers, may want to look in on “Dead Poets Society.” It’s where part of the summer is at.