Robin Williams deservedly got an Oscar nomination, one of several he got, including GOOD MORNING VIETNAM (1987) and GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997), the latter for which he finally got the award as Best Supporting Actor.
In 1959 Welton Academy, a prestigious boarding school, former pupil John Keating (Williams) returns to teach at the very strict establishment and golden-ticket curriculum and in the process begins to instil his own method of unorthodox teaching to his pupils (including a young Ethan Hawke) and motivates them to ‘make their lives extraordinary’ and quote the mantra of ‘carpe diem (seize the day). For one pupil, Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) he discovers the joy of acting, but his strict disciplinarian father (Kurtwood Smith) is against the idea and begins to have suspicions about his son’s mindset.
The school begins to cast doubt on Keating’s methods, determined to bring him line with the pillars of wisdom that Welton represents.
One of the most inspirational education-based films of all time, directed by Peter Weir (THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, WITNESS), DEAD POETS SOCIETY is an intelligently-written story of one man vs the concept of traditional education at a time when the concept of free-thinking was more frowned upon.
Williams is superb as the catalyst for his student’s change of hearts, in a story that does become heartbreaking towards the end.
One of the best films of the 1980s and one that rounds out the decade with a high