Lift Up Your Hearts!

Because I'm usually the last to see a film (this one is from 1989), I won't worry about spoilers, but if you haven't seen it, be warned that this post will reveal both too little and too much of the story.

The movie had been recommended by several people, so when I found it on Netflix I put it in the queue, and last week it worked its way to the top.  I found it an engaging and moving film, but it wasn't until the next day that I realized why it troubled me.

That mindless conformity can be stultifying, especially in a school setting, I heartily agree.  Robin Williams is convincing as the new English teacher, Mr. Keating, whose oddball antics at an elite prep school finally begin to teach his students to think more independently.  It's hard not to cheer at the end, when after giving in to pressure from their parents and the school administration to accuse Mr. Keating of misconduct and get him fired, they turn around and give him a modest show of support that indicates his work was not all in vain.  But this visceral response does not stand up to rational analysis.

C. S. Lewis said (somewhere) that each age and culture works assiduously to stamp out the sins to which it has the least tempation while being blind to its own particular weaknesses.  Dead Poets Society is like that.  Urging most teenagers to rebel against their parents and other adult authorities is like urging a fish to swim.  Had the focus of the movie been on peer conformity it might have been more useful, though not as well-received.

As winsome as Mr. Keating is, and as much as I approve of some of his ideas and see the value of his methods, there's no getting around the reality that he turned a lion loose and learned too late he could not control it.  He did not give his students the education their parents were paying for, and encouraged them in actions that were contrary to their parents' wishes.  As easy as it is to hate the one-dimensional, villainous parents as they are presented here, it shouldn't have required forced confessions to fire Keating—he wasn't doing the job he had been hired to do.

Coercion from parents and school administrators is portrayed as bad, but pressure from fellow students as good.

And the most-quoted line from the film, carpe diem?  Do we really want to tell young people to "seize the day"?  Seeing the present merely as preparation for the future is a fault, to be sure, but it's not one to which young people are especially prone.

Nonetheless, throughout the movie I found myself rooting for rebellion and cheering signs of independence in the students, despite the fact that it showed itself in actions I would normally call wrong.  Now that's scary, and shows the power of a moving story.

By the way, lest any of you decide to see the movie for yourselves, I disagree with its PG rating.  PG-13 maybe.  A suicide, a magazine picture of a naked woman, drunkenness, smoking, a wild party, some language I would rather not hear.  Not terrible, but I wouldn't call it PG.