Alissa Wilkinson, chief film critic for Christianity Today, asked me if I’ve ever changed my mind about a movie… and would I write about that?
So I’m asking you. What’s a movie you loved the first time, or hated the first time, and then experienced a total change of mind?
I chose to write about Dead Poet’s Society. He’s how I began my response to Alissa…
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He’s leaving. I can hardly believe it. Dr. Luke Reinsma, professor of English at Seattle Pacific University, is retiring.
Two weeks ago I revisited Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society for the first time in twenty years. Watching Robin Williams play that charismatic English teacher who transforms the lives of repressed prep-school boys, I had flashbacks to my undergraduate years when Reinsma was my academic advisor.
As a freshman at SPU in 1989, I found that this idiosyncratic professor lived up to the reputation I’d heard from former students. I learned to love how, when he handed back my essays, he had written almost as much on them as I had written in them. An exploration of The Canterbury Tales, a coffee conversation about the origins of the Arthur legends, an independent study of Old English, a post-movie talk about Quentin Tarantino—every time we met, we dug deep into the substance of our subject.
He changed my mind about so many things. I realize now that, due to his influence, even my perspective on Dead Poets Society has changed—dare I say matured?
[To read the whole article, and find out why I changed my mind, go to Christianity Today.]