To Sir with Love

Oddly enough, I just saw the last 20 minutes of Dead Poets Society this afternoon, and while I'd like to see the entire film again (it's been years) that ending is even more contrived, one-dimensional and obvious than I remembered.

I have no problems with teachers who try to get their students to see beyond their narrow environs and understand their potential better, to make them think and assess and be independent. In fact, a teacher who simply conforms and doesn't take some risks (not physical, but in terms of how he conducts his profession) isn't worth much, and I think most teachers do make an effort to help their students.

Obviously the teachers in Blackboard Jungle should have had enough sense to understand what kind of school they were in. It's a bit disconcerting to think just how unbelievably naïve, or maybe just downright stupid, they were in their behavior -- the records, tight dress, drinking, etc. -- or that they didn't realize there'd be at least some difficulties with the students.

Nonetheless, I do think they needed to make some effort to reach the kids and get them to see their potential...in fact their jobs would only have meaning if they made some such effort. (The veteran teacher played by Louis Calhern got nowhere and hated his job, but it's made clear that a big part of his dissatisfaction is his own fault, stemming from his own lack of interest and motivation.) So on that score I think the ones who try to reach the students are on the right track. They can't just "mind their own business". The welfare of their students is their business, or at least part of it. But a large dollop of common sense would also be useful. That's where they fell down (in the case of the mugging, literally!).

In Dead Poets Society I think Robin Williams was right in principle to do what he did. I would quibble about some of the ways he went about doing it. My issue isn't with the plot but its execution. The film needed to be more complex, more three-dimensional, less cloying and predictable. It may be blasphemy to some people, but I always thought Williams was a poor dramatic actor when he was playing the sincere, naïve innocent, as he is in DPS and to a large extent Good Morning, Vietnam. By contrast, I thought he was superb in Awakenings (1990), playing the introverted, quiet scientist who found a way to bring patients long thought comatose back into consciousness. Robert de Niro got the Oscar nomination for playing a patient, in accordance with Hollywood's affinity for actors who play disabled people, but Williams was the one who should have been cited. It was the complexity and genuine emotion of that film that was lacking in the manipulative, simplistic DPS.

Anyway, Blackboard Jungle was a landmark movie for its time. And also one of three films to use "Rock Around the Clock" for its title tune. Know what the others were?