In 2006, I walked into a hotel room to interview Robin Williams for “RV,” a typical, mid-career cinematic romp for the late, beloved comedic actor.
I found him standing in front of the window, staring out of it thoughtfully. He joked, as one would expect, about how the situation looked. “Ah, it’s always difficult to go through a closed window, isn’t it?” he said with a small smile that crinkled the skin around his sweet eyes. “You have to go for the running leap.”
That sad, telling anecdote says something serious about the Oscar-winning performer: So much of his comedy — and certainly his greatest moments as a dramatic actor — was tinged with a personal darkness that projected a sense of tragedy not far from view.
Williams’ first notable film performance, after his debut in 1980’s “Popeye,” was in the 1982 tragicomic adaptation of John Irving’s “The World According to Garp.” The title role, an imaginative writer whose short life was shadowed by death and catastrophe, seemed to fit Williams.
Playing the character allowed Williams to show a side of his talent that fans of his stand-up comedy and work on TV’s “Mork & Mindy” hadn’t seen. But as Williams’ cinematic career ramped up, it was that side of his genius from which some of his strongest work was drawn.
That work was and is remarkable for the dexterity Williams showed in dancing between the dark and the light. In “Moscow on the Hudson” (1984), he played a Russian circus performer who defects to America while on a shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s, unaware of the difficulties life had in store for him. In 1987’s “Good Morning Vietnam,” he played real-life DJ Adrian Cronauer, a voice of reason and avatar of lunacy in the midst of the Vietnam War. It was Williams’ first Oscar nomination.
In “Dead Poets Society” (1989), arguably his most beloved film, Williams was the teacher at a boys school in 1950s New England whose influence on his students had both calamitous and joyful consequences.
That film remains a touchstone for moviegoers who discover it anew as young people, and Williams’ Prof. Keating is the guide we all wished we had.
He began the ’90s with one of several career high points. “The Fisher King” (1991) saw Williams play Parry, a New York homeless man haunted by the memory of his wife’s murder, and the role was a tightrope-walk that the actor navigated expertly. The movie was a gem, and Williams, pulling one genuine emotional note after another out from within, was extraordinary in it.
That decade also saw some of his best comedic moments in film. As the voice of the Genie in “Aladdin” (1992), Williams presented Disney animators with a catch-me-if-you-can challenge: Match their fluid artwork to his quicksilver mind and mouth. “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) put him in drag as a divorced dad who dresses as an older British woman to be near his kids. And “The Birdcage” (1996) found him camping it up as a gay man trying to act butch for his son’s potential in-laws.
Williams finally got an Academy Award in 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” for his supporting turn as a tough-luck, Harvard-educated therapist who mourned his late wife and career failings while treating a young, troubled math genius (Matt Damon) . Trading in his Groucho Marx wit for a Karl Marx beard and a somber demeanor, Williams anchored the movie and was its emotional touchstone. His jubilant photos from backstage at the Oscars with Damon and Ben Affleck, who won Best Original Screenplay for the film, are portraits of real joy.
His last dozen years saw him provide fans with on-screen silliness, but, perhaps reflecting a constant struggle that we now know to have been insurmountable, his film work grew darker. In 2002, he played a disturbed photomat worker in “One-Hour Photo,” and an Alaskan serial killer in “Insomnia.” In 2006’s “The Night Listener,” he was an embittered late-night DJ whose partner was HIV-positive. Three years later, in “World’s Greatest Dad,” he was the father of a boy whom the community believes committed suicide.
In his most recent film to play theaters, “The Angriest Man in Brooklyn,” Williams played a New Yorker who goes on a tear when he thinks he has an inoperable brain tumor. The rage is tinged with sarcasm, and the film was reminder of the flinty, fiery quality of Williams’ early stand-up.
But as he used his inner demons to add depth to his films, even while sometimes keeping us in stitches, the result could make us stand up in a salute reminiscent of Prof. Keating’s desk-climbing students in "Dead Poets Society."
In fact, their tribute — “O Captain, My Captain” — seems perfectly, tragically appropriate right now.
On a mobile device? Click here to watch video.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1vIQcwB
0 comments:
Post a Comment