Dead Poet's Society

Directed by Peter Weir

At the Janus Theater

USE the J. Evans Pritchart formula for evaluating poetry and extend it to film. Now, we can examine Dead Poet's Society by putting the method which the film uses to present its message (its "perfection") on the Y axis of a graph, and the importance of that message on the X axis.

The film's methods--the acting, direction, cinematography and music--are strong, beautiful, if sometimes convoluted. The importance of its message is unmeasurable despite its current cliche status.

So, according to the Pritchart method, Dead Poet's Society covers a huge area on a graph, and can clearly be viewed as a great film.

But, as Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) says, "Pritchart is excrement."

Dead Poet's Society is undoubtably one of the best--perhaps, indeed, the best--film of the summer. But, like poetry, its qualities cannot be graphed and measured.

AT the start of Dead Poet's Society, a class of prep school boys, who have spent their lives conforming to their parents desires, are presented by their new English teacher with the lesson "Carpe Diem."

Look at the photos of boys long gone from the Helton School, Keating tells his awed class, and look and wonder how many of them died before they had lived. And then look at yourselves.

And they did. Six of them looked further, back into Mr. Keating's years at Helton, and discovered the Dead Poet's Society, a group of boys who went late at night to the old Indian cave in the woods and read poetry aloud to each other.

Taken with the romance of the idea, Mr. Keatings' students decided to make their own foray to the Indian cave. They read poetry, sang, danced, smoked pot, told ghost stories and knew that they were no longer conforming.

Back in class, Mr. Keating made them stand on desks, walk strangely around the courtyard, recite poetry aloud and confront the secret desires they had never let through previously in their lives.

The message of the film seemed to be that by refusing to conform, by living "deliberately," you can learn yourself and be happy.

But director Peter Weir decided, wisely though painfully, to allow reality to intrude. And in the reality of a New England boarding school, the Dead Poet's Society floundered.