Personality and tradition, innovation and conservatism, individual and collective, ideal and reality.
Only after watching this movie did I know that I had been dead for a long time, starting from an inadvertently broken morning.
In a sense, this film tells an overly pure story. I said too much because it was not commercialized, so it also became a box office poison. A group of young boys, a teacher with a unique understanding of life, and a rigid and famous middle school where they live.
The film mainly tells the story of a group of students who learn how to choose their own lives under the guidance of Mr. Keating and resist the teaching system that gives them repression and restraint, but it ends with a student's suicide and Mr. Keating's resignation. The arrangement of the plot is flowing, without any fancy, but when the first half of the cartoon comes to a gloomy ending, it makes people feel a little gloomy, but it is this feeling of being frustrated by reality and the depressing climax of the last scene that sublimates the meaning of the film. Looking back, the rich connotation of the film will even make people confused. Who is the protagonist of this film, Mr. Keating? Student? Or is it a system that imprisons people like an iron house or this real world?
In Keating's world, what we see is the story of how an educator became an exile under the system and dogma. If there are two completely different worlds in this film, one is the real world symbolizing bondage and oppression, and the other is the dream world embodying freedom and passion, then Keating is the connection point between the two worlds. He is a teacher in the real world, a person with many auras in the real world, but he is also a helmsman who guides students to discover and cherish their inner dreams (captain? ), help students face themselves frankly and face their friends in life. He taught them to look at the world with different eyes, to be different from themselves, to challenge those dogmas that are the golden rule in the eyes of others, and to take the road they really want to take. Whether it is to let students tear off the authoritative evaluation of poetry, read it attentively, or let them see how they change their pace with the footsteps of others, Keating infected this group of young people who have been suppressed for too long with his personality charm, and restored their courage and passion to fly. Keating's own ending was driven away by the school in the name of "poisoning" students' thoughts, which seemed to echo the tragic fate of those challengers and traitors in the distant and close time and space. Fire thieves give people light, but they can only bear the notoriety of thieves forever and walk away silently.
In Neil's world, it shows how a person can get out of the shadow of other people's lives, see the sunshine shining on himself and do what he wants to do. Neil's passion for finding the meaning of life was ignited in Keating's class, and Dead Poets Society was reorganized. Without telling his parents, he participated in the performance of his fantasy drama, and his flying life shone with the light of elves in A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, when the curtain fell, he had to return to reality and face his father's harsh and cold eyes. Between parents and dreams, Neil has no way out. Finally, on a snowy cold night, he took the elf's meditation for the last time, set foot on a cold night like water, ended his short life, and made a silent resentment for the last time with a free and lively attitude towards life. In him, we see the romance and agitation of a dreamer, and also the helplessness and groaning of the bound who are burdened with the pressure of real life.
And there is another character in the film that can't be ignored, that is Todd. Timid, cowardly, study hard, be taciturn and talk little. When I look at him, I always feel that some part of my body is singing with him. Beneath his incompetent and ordinary appearance, there is still a passion hidden, but his passion is always flowing silently until the end of the film. When Mr. Keating left, he could do nothing, even acted as the plaintiff helplessly. The moment Keating left the classroom, he stood on the desk and shouted, "Captain, my captain!" " "This is Keating's way, a way to see the world in different ways. Now, this method has become a weapon to openly laugh at the sad bondage of the real world. Although there is not much damage to this world that has been numb for too long, the director still shows us that under the leadership of Todd, almost all the students in the class stand up one after another. This scene is a bit sensational and unreal, but it does give each of us hope to move on. Keating is gone, but no one will doubt that the brand of youth will remain in the hearts of these people who have just embarked on their own life path forever.
The whole movie is full of tension, poetry and passion. There are two scenes that I will never forget. Once it was an empty shot, showing the blackbirds flying in the fields in autumn. I have never seen so many birds fly in an instant. The momentum of the sky is like a force struggling to rise, eager to fly recklessly at all costs. The sound of their wings disturbed Akita's vast tranquility, even if it was short-lived, but it also made the world hear their own voices.
There are also several figures yearning for freedom walking through the fog in the dark, lonely souls, warming up for poetry and trembling in the passion of poetry. I can't see them clearly, but I feel that inadvertently, my heart followed them to a cave, where I poured out all my anger and looked for the power of life in my excited eyes.
A movie about poetry is of course a poetic warning, such as "Only in dreams can people be truly free, forever, forever." "The two roads diverged in the forest, and I chose the one with fewer people."
"If we can't change the world, then we should at least change our lives and live freely." In the distant days, Milan Kundera said.
Here, written on Todd's tender cheek, engraved on Neil's bauhinia corolla, revealed in Keating's disappointed smile:
I walked into the jungle,
Because I want my life to be meaningful.
I hope to live deeply.
Absorb the essence of all life.
Destroy everything that is not life.
So when my life is over,
I found that I had never lived.
Equally inspiring words.
The film "Dead Poets Society" may have borrowed the meaning of being born to die. Only by letting the part of your mind that doesn't belong to you and the part of your soul die can you really grasp the part of your life that belongs to your soul. Start a real life, a sober life and a meaningful life! Giving up and dying were accompanied by pain, so there was Neil who came to the end of his life in the moonlight and Keating who was forced to leave school. However, behind the pain is the birth of a new life. So, the movie let us see Todd and see Todd in the classroom. This is the continuation and future!