Education: a word, or a reality? Or, better: extracting the best in anyone, or considering only what we think is the best?

Communication: we can communicate with sons to give them a true Education, or we jet know what’s the best for them?

Again: can we damage a person, leading him to extreme consequence, like Death, thinking of making each good?

And, can we really live our life, taking an active part in it, or must we let life to flow, assuming only a passive part?

This film, a real Masterpiece by Peter Weir, tries to give an answer to these questions. With a very well performed story, with perfectly in-part Actors.

England, nowadays. A very backward school, where “Discipline, Honor, Obedience” are only words, pronounced without conviction, only like empty symbols. Only a Ceremony.

All the life, inside it, flows like s Ceremony! Instruction itself is not seen like a way to enrich child’s spirit, but only like a mere need. A thing that “must” be done, but without knowing the true motives of it.

Weir is very able in showing it through a supreme Cinema language. The immobile expressions of Norman, School’s Headmaster, of all the Professors…..probably of every parent and Student. They think of having found the way of solving their lives. Their mood is right, but they don’t know what they really want, their life is only a “totally flat” becoming, jet decided, jet established. Nothing in them is open to the future, to the spirit flow and situation.

All is nothing. Furniture, halls, rooms…..all is backward, and seems to be stopped. But, so long of being a remember of the past, a remember of a glorious tradition, it’s only an involution to themselves, maybe a “not being”, or, worse, a “nothing being”: And here, childs are not happy.

In this scene arrives John Keating (Robin Williams). He is totally different. And we know at once this way! His expression, his mood, his way…we understand so at a first look!

He teaches literature. But he uses it (especially Poetry) to make people in understanding that Life is worth to be lived, like a “player”, not like a victim of the Time. “Carpe Diem” (Seize the Day), is his leitmotiv. Make your life wonderful!

This liberation of themselves changes student’s life. And really makes their time fantastic. Their expressions change, their ways change, their spirit arises, and…their study improves! In all of it, Tradition is seen not like a backward and to be forgotten thing, but like the structure upon which

To build-up the Future, in a perfect harmony. The aim is extracting the best in anyone.

A lesson: people are not all the same. Everyone has a richness, an “his own” richness. World is fine because you can valorize this one.

With “Dead Poets Society” (the name of their Group, they founded thanks Prof. Keating), they discover what they are, their true soul, what they want in their life.

Weir, in all this work, wants to show the contrast between this life and the life of the School, the contrast between the way of discovering their own life, and the life School and Family institutions want by them. And this contrast could get very, very hard, and maybe lethal, first for Spirit, but maybe for Person. Without leading their life, but being leaded by it, no life is possible.

And, Education, unfortunately, makes so without any intention of wounding. But it wounds, and it can wound in a strong, in a severe way, by destroying a person, his hopes, his willing. Clearing his personality, and compelling him to assume a “Not his own personality”, a personality that is a non-personality. A personality that is….nothing, in which Joy can get despair, happiness can get only sorrow, and dead for Spirit. And, unfortunately, all of that happens in a total good faith! And, perhaps, thinking of making every Good for a son! (this is the example of Mr. Perry, that, without wishing, will lead his son to his destruction).

A lesson, emphasized by a remarkable language, a language made by lights, looks, pauses, a rhythm that shifts from fast to definite, slow, with a slowness made by intensity, and never boring, but always wonderful!

A Masterpiece of Cinema, a work to be reminded. For the way of telling, of describing, but also for Content. An “must” speaking about Education and Diseases (I recommend, for this way, the wonderful “Family Life” by Ken Loach) , often due to the willing of Maximum Care for Child, but not the right care.

A work to look carefully, to reflect upon. A film that, with any doubt, will be remembered and, I hope (I’m sure it’s so!), will be able to tell us something, in any moment of our life.

Sergio Ragaini