Issue 44 • May 2020 • Record of Lent Term 2020
THE
OCELLUS From the Headmaster
Watching old films has been on the increase these last weeks and, looking over some films lists, I was struck by the fascination the film industry has shown over the years with schools and school life. From Goodbye Mr Chips to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, via Billy Bunter and his closely guarded tuck boxes, St Trinian’s and The School of Rock. One very successful school film, made in the late ‘80s, and starring the late, great Robin Williams, was Dead Poets Society. It centred on an exclusive and conservative school in New England, and the arrival of Mr Keating - a somewhat avant-garde new English teacher. The title announces the main theme of the film, the teacher’s effort to inspire the pupils through poetry and to convince them it has the power to unlock their best qualities: their selfawareness, their individuality, their courage, their creativity. One memorable phrase from the film comes from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace – carpe diem, seize the day. Keating tells his pupils, ‘Carpe Diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary’ - which is officially the 95th greatest movie quote of all time! American poets feature too, of course, including Robert Frost and his poem The Road Not Taken. It has a similar idea, of the decision to take a road ‘less travelled by’, to be true to oneself, to tread one’s own path. What I think the film does not make fully clear is precisely why poetry can have this power. For that I think we can turn to Alan Bennett and The History Boys. Discussing poetry with a pupil, the teacher says, ‘The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought was special to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.’ Poems do not always seem an accessible genre to school pupils, probably because sometimes their message can appear obscure. Sometimes the themes themselves do not seem to reflect their interests. But it is precisely that initial inaccessibility that makes them worth the effort. They are meant to be evocative, to stir up something inside us, an unfelt emotion, a new idea, a realisation. Dead Poets Society was set in the ‘50s, and the school was one that favoured teaching to systems, and honouring established values. We live in a different time, where schools are less regimented, and individual expression has more currency. But the film has a timeless message, about the power of poetry to raise our spirits and to help us to look at things in a different way. As I think about it, The School of Rock is basically the same film, albeit with more comedy, and 1 replacing poetry with Rock music. But I do not think it has such a moving final scene!