Oh dear. I’ve been putting this off. Look, Dead Poets Society is a very nice film. Very inspirational. Very Robin Williams. Very Carpe Diem.

But the script is just so dull! It’s just a big pile of disjointed dialogue, a series of vignettes vaguely unified by one or two faint story threads.

I think the problem is that I just never cared that much about the characters. I’ve been wondering why that is, because they portray some pretty fundmental behaviours: heroic inspiration, railing against authority, thwarted love, treachery and betrayal and – ultimately – self-slaughter.

But my question throughout was always why? Why are you behaving like this? We’re given few clues. There are one or two big signposts: the stern father, the nice-but-unavailable girl. But subtlety? No. None of that.

I finally worked out why. What we’ve got here is a case of implicit characterisation. We’re meant to know and understand these young people and this teacher because, hey, that was us back at High School. Remember those New England autumns? Remember those pacts we made at graduation? Remember our authoritarian fathers who demanded that we become lawyers?

No. Sorry. I’m English. I mean, I get what you’re saying here, but it’s not my experience. That’s not where I’m from. I’m understanding it second hand. I appreciate it, but I don’t grok it. Get where I’m coming from?

So is it lazy scriptwriting to rely on the audience’s collective experience to illuminate the story? No, it’s not. In fact, it’s very smart indeed. Great storytellers tap into the psyche of the audience. They know what scares you. They know what inspires you. They know what disgusts you. They know what makes your heart melt. And all they have to do is hint at it and point the way. You make the journey at their behest.

So Dead Poets Society is a classic example of a story that surfs on the collective memory of the United States of America. It probably inspired a whole generation of Americans.

It just doesn’t inspire me. Sorry.