Whenever I am asked what my favorite movie is, my answer for the longest time has been 3 Idiots. Of course, I have my biases toward an Indian movie. However, the second on that list has always been Dead Poets Society. Some of the dialogue by Robin Williams from that movie makes up the philosophical core of my thinking.
From taking up arts as a subject in college to taking up writing as a profession- such has been the influence of Dead Poets Society in my life that every major career and life choice has somehow been a derivative of the words of Mr. John Keating. As the movie completes its 35 years in 2024, how on earth could I have missed the chance to pay my homage to suck out the marrow of life?
The first time I had ever heard about Dead Poets… was when I was obsessed with finding out which Indian movies were copied *ahem* inspired by which Hollywood movies. And I read somewhere that one of my favourite movies Mohabbatein was a remake (unofficial of course, who paid for or acknowledged these things back then?!) of an 80s Robin William’s movie called Dead Poets Society. I watched it for the first time as a teenager in 2015, and my life hasn’t been the same since.
I didn’t become a fan the first time I watched it. I thought it was a good movie, of course. But the constantly used phrase ‘life-changing’ on the internet, umm…didn’t feel so. It was only in the subsequent viewing and reading more about the movie, and simply just thinking about it and letting it grow on me that changed everything. Dead Poets… has meant a lot of things to me since, and it means something different in every single viewing.
I come from a place and a family where nobody has ever taken arts as a subject. Science is the norm, commerce still accepted. And needless to mention Dead Poets gave me the strength and confidence to convince my parents and more importantly, convince myself to explore this unchartered territory.
I took up writing as a profession because I truly believed it when Keating said, “Words and ideas can change the world.” In a scene about making difficult choices, Neal asks Keating that he could do anything and be anywhere, so how could he stand being in a boarding school, continents away from his lady love? To which Ketaing replies, “Because I love teaching, I don’t wanna be anywhere else.” That’s it, that’s where all the doubts dissolved. When life presented me with choices of making a career in what society thought was conventionally best for me, I opted for the path less traveled.
Apart from affecting my big career choices, the movie has become a way of life. Way before it used to be in everyone’s Instagram captions and a tattoo of choice for many, ‘Carpe diem – seize the day’ had become the axiom of my life. Whenever things start looking mundane, I try to stand up on my desk or my chair like Keating to see the world from a new height, from a whole different perspective.
The imagery of Neal and his friends sneaking out in the dark of the night to read poetry inside a cave could never leave my mind. Every poetry or pop culture group (physically, in person) or WhatsApp group I formed in college was named ‘Dead Poets Society’. Until my mid-teens, consuming art was my bliss of solitude. Dead Poets… installed the idea of art flourishing in a collective and that has been my favourite route for consumption of poetry, prose, and plays.
Owing to the words of Mr. Keating, I always try to avoid the laziness of using the word ‘very’. Whenever I see a medical professional save lives, I doubt if I could have contributed any better to humanity had I picked up some different profession. However, the line, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for”, always strengthens my belief that I am making my fare share in my own unique way.
While watching Animal (ya THAT magnum opus of Indian cinema) I laughed hard at the line when Ranbir demeans all the poets as being inferior to the ‘alphas’ and it reminded me of Keating’s line that language was invented to woo women. Same sentences, entirely different perspectives. It was at that moment that I realised that I had chosen my heroes wisely.
Amid all the lines from this movie that have echoed in the pop-culture realm for the past 35 years, my favourite has to be when Robin Williams asks, “What will your verse be?”. The idea that the powerful play of the human race goes on and we may contribute a verse is the source of soothe and unease at the same time.
Dead Poets… is not just entertainment for me, it has become a source of inspiration and a way of life. Every time someone asks me for mummy kasam, I swear by my Dead Poets’ Oath. Every time I say goodbye to a person who has contributed a verse in my life, I bid them adieu with, “Oh Captain, my Captain”.
