The Theme Of Carpe Diem In A Dead Poets Society Essay Sample

How Peter Weir’s direction of Dead Poets Society Carpe diem, what is it you might ask? That means to seize the day, it's a latin phrase that quite literally means “pluck the day”. It expresses the idea that one should enjoy life and all its beauty before it's too late. In 1989 Dead Poets Society, Director and Filmmaker Peter Weir tours the relations and character between a teacher and his students, to explore a better meaning of “Carpe diem” and how he uses it to better his students. In this film by Peter Weir, the director utilizes Composition, Deep focus and Color palette in order to reveal how Mr.Keating uses “Carpe Diem” to establish a better relationship between a teacher and his students.

An approach that Weir used was to show the positive relationship and show positive character between Mr.Keating and his students is using composition. In one of the scenes, it shows one of the students named Todd Anderson and Mr.Keating. The work of composition is simply amazing in this scene. In the scene Mr.Keating helps Todd from his severe social anxiety condition. It's so bad that Todd would rather fail on one of his assignments in order to not talk in front of the class, so Mr.Keating tells Todd to get up and make a yawp, a loud yawp. From which he yawped, he became a lot more comfortable talking in front of the class. The combining factor of Todds social anxiety and Mr.keating's extrovertness really focuses on the key points of understanding Todds anxiety. Mr.Keating has energetic energy and positive social interactions, like what most people go through on a daily basis,  but you can clearly see Todd drained of energy until he does that first loud yawp which in a sense clenches his social anxiety. Farthing this, MrKeating makes him come up with a poem on the spot. He points to a picture on his wall and tells him to not think, just say. From this he uses random details to come up with a poem on the spot. When he does it, Todd smiles knowing he just came up with that and especially in front of the class, giving him a more energetic vibe. These actions are largely based on the composition of Todd and Mr.Keating. The two actors in the scene together are heavily highlighted. When Todd reveals his smile at the end, you can tell Todd just shares a moment of thankfulness with Mr.Keating.

Overall the composition establishes deep emotion and character between the two characters (00:56:13 - 00:57:57). At the end of the film, Todd openly talks in front of the class and has energy with it. It's the ending scene where when Mr.Keating got fired, he had to clean his thing out of his desk. This scene is especially sad because of Neil's death that just happened. Neil, another charcter in the film that commited suicide because of his fathers ambitions for him. Neil gained a strong dislike for this so he killed himself as he couldn't do anything about his father. As a result of this they found out about the dead poets' society. The school thought Neil killed himself because of this so Mr.Keating got fired, as he was the one who showed them the dead poets society. So at the end when Mr.Keating is cleaning out his desk, Todd starts a movement between the boys involved in the dead poets society. He got up from his desk right before Mr.Keating was about to leave and said “Captain O’ My Captain” which is something Mr.Keating told his students to call him. One by one the boys got up in support of Mr.Keating  (02:01:21 - 02:04:01) . The composition of this scene really shows Todds rising from his social anxiety disorder and the pure relationship Mr.Keating had with his students. The character developed in Todd was really built throughout the movie.  Todd would never have done something so extroverted, the nature of which really shows a true purpose of Mr.Keating and the students' relationship. Overall in these two scenes it really built character and relation status between the students and Mr.Keating by using excelente composition.

Another approach Weir uses to film and directing is using deep focus shots, using deep focus shots to capture the relation and emotion shown between Mr.Keating and his students. The deep focus technique is heavily used in the dead poets society. Very soon into the long film, in fact it's actually one of the first lessons that Mr.Keating teaches. The deep focus shot is used a lot. In the scene where carpe diem is brought up, Mr.Keating tells the boys to go in the hallway to talk about poetry there and look at some history photos. He tells one of the boys to read the passage. From the passage they talk about carpe diem. This is where the idea is first brought up and if you ask me the most important scene in the entire movie. From then he asks any of his students if he knows about carpe diem and one of them says yes and replies “to seize the day”. Mr.Keating says yes that what it is but further explores the meaning of the phrase. There are focus shots on him and the students during this. After this he shows the boys the history photos of the school. While that is being shown, as the boys and Mr.Keating look at the photos, the camera has a series of deep focuses on the history photos and Mr..Keating(00:12:16-00:16:40) The meaning of these deep focus shots is to emphasize the relation between the students and the teacher. By doing this the viewers feel a sense of a closer connection between them. The deep focus shot overall discovered Mr.Keating's feeling of carpe diem and it did a really good job. It also established great character for Mr.Keating as now, even this early on in the film, he seems like a really cool teacher. Previously in the film it showed other teachers making their class boring all day. The teachers in this theme seem mean and just generally not having a good ambition for the students(00:10:27-00:11:16)  then it cuts to the scene previously discussed. It basically shows his teaching style in glory while frowning upon the other teachers' teaching styles. So overall the focus shots  also established character as well as a great relationship between Mr.Keating and his students by really exploring and understanding carpe diem

The last way Weir uses to establish relation and character between the teacher and his students is using a color palette. Between the beginning of the movie and the end of the movie the color palette really evolves from being bright and nice to being dark and even rainy. In one of the scenes in the beginning of the movie, before class starts, you can see a bright environment and a nice landscape of birds flying. It's bright and very green, overall just makes the environment seem very peaceful. (00:09:50-00:10:07) Weir uses this color palette before class starts to tell you that right now everything is good in the students life, nothing bad has happened yet. It starts all green and peaceful before the school year in which Neil would kill himself. Further into this, The director uses a very dark color palette on the day of Neil's death. When Neil is about to kill himself, all of the lights in his house are pretty much off since it's dark out. He looks out the window and sees a dark sky, while he is looking out it he reminisces about his days in a negative way as he is about to die. Then Neil walks down the stairs which are very dark. He goes to his parents room and takes a key. From then he porceases to his fathers desk room and shoots himself,  killing him. He does this because of his father's ambitions(as previously established) and because he wanted to be an actor.  Mr.Keating was Neils main inspiration for being an actor, but his fathers ambition was for him to become a doctor. So when his father heard of his play he had been doing(he was one of the main actors), he pulled him out of his highschool to go to a military school, which will put him on course to go to Harvard  (01:43:14-1:47:36). Before this thought Neil thought of carpe diem, he wanted to use Mr.Keating advice to do what he wanted. He never wanted to be a doctor, he wanted to be an actor, that's his true passion. Mr.Keating thought Neil should do this also. Neil was highly brightened by the idea and that alone furthered his relation with Mr.Keating. Neil thought very highly of him. Mr.Keating was a father figure in Neils life since his own wasn't good. During this whole time, the color palate is very dark in retrospect of the beginning where it was very bright and peaceful.  The character of Neil was developed very well as he was seen as always as a happy cheerful kid, but during the film you see him get off this course and become very sad. The overall character of Neil is written very well and portrayed even better. The relationship between Neil and Mr.Keating is very adequate, as the relationship between Neil and his father was very poor. To add on the characterization of  Neil during this scene is also very good as you can see his reactions, actions and Neil himself. Lastly, The overall character of Neil was heavily emphasized in this scene, The color palettes really revealed a meaning and understanding of Neil.

In conclusion uses many different ways-- Composition, Deep focus and Color palettes-- are in use in order to reveal the importance of carpe diem and how Mr.Keating uses it to better his students. From Mr.Keating helping Todd with his social anxiety to Helping  Neil to find his true passion. Also just furthering their knowledge of carpe diem. The lessons Mr.Keating taught the boys will stay with the students forever. Mr.Keating definitely was one of the main influences in this film and in my opinion made it what it was, without him the movie would not nearly be as good.