Dead Poets

I wrote an essay for this movie in senior English, and after the class was rebuked for their poor performances, I was given a higher grade. I turned this in early and was told it wasn't up to scratch, I, for some reason, needed help to fix it but I have no idea what I did other than move a few paragraphs around and did well. I did well in English, not English lit. I knew the Thoreu* passage, I ironically had to pick apart Frost at a tertiary level. I'm not a big poetry fan, I'm kind of a movie fan and I like this movie. It's fun for what could be considered something stuffy and inaccessible. You couldn't get many guys to watch this now, which sucks. I appreciate most blokes hold Shawshank up as their favourite movie about men. I think they don't appreciate one about boys becoming men through poetry and art, who find the elixir of life through destroying the status-quo, in the wilderness no less. They could surely identify with being contained in a society that did not permit expression of self or soul. Weir appreciated the zest of raging hormones barely contained but didn't take it to such debauchery you'd end up with an American Pie prototype. The artful camera work in such a confined space as the cave and the dorm rooms is spectacular in its intent, it stirs excitement within. There are some brilliant extended rotating shots with so much energy infused it makes you dizzy.

We didn't encourage boys to like literature and we still don't, which is bullshit. Cultivating the art in younger students itself seems to be a dying process as much as poetry might die quicker than prose. Getting poetry out there is often harder, I think self-publishing was probably vital to some people, except those assholes who stole Vines and passed them off as modern poetry. 

I feel like this should be essential viewing in school still. If they're not giving it for English, that's stupid and sad. Ethan Hawke practically gets acting lessons from Robin Williams, who was settling into dramatic roles with more gusto than comedy. We were spoiled to have seen him in those days at his pique without knowing how much he suffered, it was tough explaining to people how hard that hit the Gen X/Millennial fan base, by then to the kids he was just some old guy that made your parents laugh a lot. He still makes us laugh a lot. 

And yes, there is a non-consensual head kiss in there but it's really not that perverted. That still falls on deaf ears anyway.

*He lived in a shack in the woods but came from money, he wasn't that revolutionary. No more than the Unabomber.