Monday 21 September 2015

Dead Poets


In art, like in life, all the best things are subjective. And while eventually (as years roll on and more art is accumulated) head takes over heart, there are things you would never even dream of putting down. Those things that made a strong impression when you were 13 years old. Things that would now make you a completely different human being.

Some stand up (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), some don’t (Forrest Gump, regardless of the soundtrack), some you don’t even want to touch. Dead Poets Society, that old childhood favourite, is one of those. You realise, at the back of your mind, that the youthful idealism grates and there are scenes upon scenes upon scenes that would make you wince uncontrollably. You imagine that, you haven’t seen the film in years. 

You don’t wish to watch it again. Heavens forbid. Watching it now would be a fist in your mouth. A blow below your waistline. You value it too much, the film or perhaps the memory of it, to make the experience objective. And then later, sometime somewhere, you suddenly mention it to a serene-eyed, ghost-chasing inspiration-seeking youth singing to you a few memorable lines from Morrissey’s “Cemetery Gates”.