Best Actor 1989: Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society

Robin Williams received his second nomination of four (so far) for playing John Keating an inspirational English Teacher in the Dead Poet's Society.

The Dead Poet's society is not a very original movie in any regard. It enjoyable I suppose in its standard way though. In Williams plays the standard role of the inspirational teacher who teaches his students to be individuals rather than conformists. Williams actually is hardly the focus of the movie and is really just a supporting player to the main students.

Williams performance here is not anything that special. He plays the inspirational teacher as you would expect, he would. He gives the dramatic and inspirational speeches well enough, but his character itself lacks very much depth. He just is just the teacher nothing more, why does he force the students to call him Captain, My Captain, because he loves Poetry I guess, why does he act the way he does precisely, you never truly find out from William's performance.I wish there was more to his performance but instead we get very little. He is okay in a mostly restrained performance, but one thing brought this performance down for me. That was one scene where he completely breaks character and does Robin Williams' comedy routine.


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