Part of Music City Mondays and Nashville: A City on Film
Directed by Peter Weir (THE TRUMAN SHOW) and written by Nashville-born screenwriter Tom Schulman (WHAT ABOUT BOB and HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS), DEAD POETS SOCIETY is a coming‑of‑age drama set in 1959 at the fictionalized Welton Academy, a New England prep school modeled after Schulman’s local alma mater, Montgomery Bell Academy. The film stars Robin Williams as John Keating, an unorthodox English teacher who urges his students — played by Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard — to challenge Welton’s rigid traditions through poetry, individual expression and the motto carpe diem. As the boys revive Keating’s former secret club, the Dead Poets Society, their search for autonomy collides with the school’s authoritarian norms, culminating in tragedy and a defiant gesture of solidarity. Though not filmed in Tennessee, the film is deeply connected to the city’s 20th century educational, filmmaking and cultural history.
“Robin Williams’ performance is more graceful than anything he’s done before. He’s more restrained, yet he’s brisk, enlivening, a perky, wiry fellow…. There are lovely pauses and beautiful transitional shots; the unhurried storytelling is polished. Peter Weir is still in his mid-forties and the editing is swift, yet this is conservative craftsmanship. He works the way some of the major Hollywood directors (William Wyler, George Stevens, John Ford) did as they got middle-aged. The picture draws out the obvious and turns itself into a classic.” —Pauline Kael, New Yorker (Jun 26, 1989) “There are some films that, if you watch them for the first time at the right age, have the capacity to inspire and embolden you: DEAD POETS SOCIETY is one such film. It is not a film that it is cool to admit loving. It is uncynical, idealistic and hopeful — not qualities one necessarily associates with film snobs, but what it lacks in critical kudos it has recouped in audience appreciation.” —Sarfraz Manzoor, Guardian (UK)
