Dead Poet Society is freeing to watch. Kind of a ‘break free from your oppressors’ story, it brings a lot of hope, charm and a wonderful warning with it; be yourself before it’s too late. While the movie does move a tiny bit slow at the beginning, Robin Williams’ John Keating snags your attention, much like his classes’, once he gets going the movie starts picking up pace. The movie shifts from a simple ‘us against them’ theme into a powerful drama when one of the students commits suicide after a terrible disagreement with his father about the direction he wants to go with his life. That suicide opens the door for the extraction of Williams’ Keating and his unorthodox methods of teaching.
Dead Poets Society is an absolute classic, without question. It’s one of those films that you can watch at least once a year and feel emotionally depleted, yet strangely satisfied by the outcome. I won’t give the ending away, as there are actually some people who have never seen it, but it’s not really what you would expect. Nonetheless, it’s great ending.
One of the biggest reasons why this movie works is because of Robin Williams. Prior to Dead Poets Society, he had been in a half of drama in Good Morning Vietnam. I personally had not seem him in a serious film from beginning to end. He proved that he’s more than comedy with Dead Poets Society, and more importantly he proved that he can make a movie like this last over decades. He plays a wonderful, sensitive, open-minded teacher that helps his budding students deal with important issues. He never breaks from this character, rather he thrives in this character. In short, he’s brilliant and he’s the reason why this movie turned out so well.
Anyway, if you have never seen this Peter Weir directed masterpiece then you need to check it out.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, it needed some work.
The video was heavily grainy. While most re-releases generally have grainy openings, the movies generally show signs of visual resistance to the grain once the film gets going. For Dead Poets Society, it simply didn’t look as clean as it should have. Even with the scenes inside the school, you can see graininess in the background and on characters faces; there’s just nothing consistent with the transfer to make it look pretty. I was a bit disappointed considering how good this film is and what it means to a lot of people. The effort for transferring it, and cleaning it up, seemed to be absent. This probably rates up there with Rain Man in terms of clean transfers to Blu-ray on epic films. It simply looked too raw. While I can say for certain that the DVD version is visually unappealing compared to this one, the Blu-ray just didn’t live up to the billing. It needed more work and it needed less grain.
Thankfully, the audio was beautiful. Coming to you in 5.1 DTS-HD, you’ll get plenty of good sounds, music and dialogue coming through your speakers. It was clean, crisp and a pleasure for the ears. The Blu-ray also comes to you in 1.85:1 and fits the screen pretty well.
Having said all that, you do get some good features. Here’s what you’re looking at:
– Dead Poets: A Look Back
– Raw Takes
– Master of Sound: Alan Splet — Interviews with David Lynch and Peter Weir
– Cinematography Master Class
– Audio Commentary with Peter Weir, cinematographer John Seale and Tom Schulman
– Theatrical Trailer
For a film that is only $20 MSRP, and an Oscar winning film, this is a nice set of features. The look back featurette is really solid. The raw takes are interesting. The audio commentary is probably the best part of the features, if you love that sort of stuff (I know I do). The sound and cinematography featurettes are an odd fit for this Blu-ray, but they’re nonetheless fascinating. Overall, this is a lot for the price you’re paying.