10 Landmark Films Starring Robin Williams

 

This morning we awoke to the news of the death of Robin Williams. Academy Award winner for his turn in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, not only was Williams one of the funniest men to ever hit the big screen but also an incredibly versatile actor able to portray a wide range of characters with drastically different personalities. From unleashing his flamboyant comedic antics in playing a man in drag posing as a nanny to stay close to his children in Mrs. Doubtfire to portraying the hauntingly dark role of a quiet and psychotic killer in One Hour Photo, there is no questioning the late actor’s skill and abilities.

 

Forgetting the tragic circumstances and looming depression that led to his sudden tragic self-inflicted demise, and swaying away from sensationalising the drug and alcohol abuse that tainted his life and that will no doubt be getting far too much importance from the media, CineCola celebrates the illustrious career of Robin Williams by recalling ten of his landmark films in chronological order.

 

POPEYE by Robert Altman, 1980

By the time Robert Altman and the big screen came calling, Robin Williams had already become a household name by interpreting Mork in the popular TV series named Mork and Mindy. The great shame was that Popeye turned out to arguably be the worst film in Altman’s whole career, unexpectedly so considering that this is the man who gave us MASH, Nashville and Gosford Park. Nevertheless, everyone must have their beginnings and it must be noted that Williams avoids going too over the top and retains some degree of credibility in a film that can either be taken an all too subjective testimony to a filmmaker’s own nostalgia or quite simply a film that is all over the place!

 

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM by Barry Levinson, 1987

Following impressive performances in the all too disregarded The World According to Garp and the all too sombre small town America baseball comedy drama The Best of Times, Williams arguably became iconic for the first time with his portrayal of a Vietnam DJ with a penchant for rebellion. Good Morning, Vietnam was billed as a biopic but was far from being one. The original subject Adrian Cronauer himself had written the script for a TV movie. When the script landed the actor’s way, he thought the character would be perfect for him but that the script would have to be completely retooled. And so, it was. Good Morning, Vietnam is indeed the ideal first vehicle that allows Williams to drastically alter his motor mouth comedy style with powerful drama and who can ever forget his memorable titular wake up call.

 

DEAD POETS SOCIETY by Peter Weir, 1989

The teacher we all wanted to have but probably never did. In what is considered by many his greatest performance, Robin Williams plays John Keating, an English teacher who fires his student’s creativity, opens their eyes towards the beauty of art and poetry and passionately tells them to seize the day. On this day, the final sequence seems to pick up different meanings. In the film’s memorable ‘o captain, my captain’ send off, the students pay tribute to the teacher but essentially turn their backs on him when they could easily have saved him. Keating walks away with a smile on his face for no apparent reason – simply because it’s an illusion, it’s cinema and we must accept it. But after all, we never knew what happened to Keating after he left the school and there is a tinge of sadness to think that there could have been defeat and tragedy behind that smile.

 

AWAKENINGS by Penny Marshall, 1990

Not for the last time in his career, Williams would be given the role of a doctor. Here, he is Dr. Malcolm Sayer who might have found a drug to cure catatonics, and this film particularly follows his relationship with his first test patient played by Robert De Niro. The two performances are radically different and Williams paradoxically ends up being a catalyst to De Niro’s required physical eccentricities. Even more of a paradox was the fact that Williams ends up out-performing the man regarded as among the greatest screen actors ever with his unusually understated ways. His turn was so good that upon receiving his lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, Robert De Niro fondly recalled it and called for an applause in his honour.

 

THE FISHER KING by Terry Gilliam, 1991

Playing a homeless man who has nobody but himself to blame, Robin Williams teamed up with Terry Gilliam, for a performance that won him another Academy Award nomination after the one for Dead Poets Society. The scene in The Fisher King where he tells the titular story is among the most fondly remembered in his whole career. This was the first time Gilliam refrained from casting fellow Monty Python members in a film of his, but considering the unique charisma of Robin Williams there is no reason to doubt that his comedic past has something to do with his casting decisions. One can only imagine what might have happened had a collaboration between these two been re-visited in other projects.

 

ALADDIN by Ron Clements, John Musker, 1992

In the early nineties, Robin Williams prominently discovered family movies starring in much loved films from Mrs. Doubtfire to Jumanji. To represent them all, we must mention Aladdin, a key film in the actor’s filmography who played the role of the blue genie. There is no understating the importance of his turn – Williams is the blue genie! So much of the fast paced dialogue was ad libbed that the film couldn’t qualify for a best adapted screenplay at the Oscars that year, while Williams himself received an honorary one for the same movie. Aladdin would also become the subject of money disagreements between the actor and the house of mouse that would prevent a partnership from developing. However, the memory of this collaboration was so strong among fans and people in the industry that when Joe Roth became Disney’s chairman a public apology was finally issued.

 

GOOD WILL HUNTING by Gus Van Sant, 1997

For a long time, the film press loved to hate this film simply because it could not be accepted that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck could have written it. Nevertheless, it has been revisited, and celebrated as a touching modern day melodrama that is ageing quite well. Good Will Hunting was the film that finally won Williams an Oscar, portraying a psychologist helping an undiscovered math genius find his direction in life. His performance is very lifelike and includes a fair share of ad-libbing, some of which is particularly celebrated. Nevetheless, a funny piece of trivia is that after winning his Oscar, he sent Peer Augustinski a letter thanking him for making him famous in Germany; Peer had dubbed his voice for German audiences!

 

ONE HOUR PHOTO by Mark Romanek, 2002

After a long streak of interesting but underwhelming or poorly executed films (What Dreams May Come, Patch Adams, Jack, Bicentennial Man to name but a few) that still retained excellent performances by Robin Williams, it was time for a change. That change can be pinpointed with his creepy turn in Romanek’s One Hour Photo that turned him into a psychotic and quiet man who secretly becomes obsessed about a family whose lives he spies on from developing their photos. This was a total detachment from his funny man persona and one that earned him a whole new level of praise. But to Williams, the biggest praise concerning this film was after a Sundance screening, when he overheard a group of viewers saying that after the first 15 minutes they had forgotten that it even was him on the screen.

 

INSOMNIA by Christopher Nolan, 2002

As mentioned with One Hour Photo, the early 2000s revealed a darker side or Robin Williams far from being a kiddie friendly star with a bubbling personality. It is only right to mention another 2002 feature that had him playing the role of the bad guy. Here, in perhaps the most Hitchcockian of Nolan films, he plays opposite Al Pacino in a riveting and gripping cat and mouse movie set in a small American town wrapped by perpetual darkness. Williams is a sinisterly and obsessively evil character, who plays with the mind of the cop and adds an ambiguity that echoes Anthony Perkins in Psycho with an added element of intelligence that makes him all the more dangerous. Williams would go on to star in other thrillers throughout the 2000s, but admittedly none were as powerful and impressive as One Hour Photo and Insomnia.

 

THE WORLD’S GREATEST DAD by Bobcat Goldthwait, 2009

Despite the quality of his work, substance abuse and alcoholism had plagued the actor’s life were particularly taking a toll on his health around this time. The work kept rolling in, but a lot of it was pretty underwhelming and failed to match his standards – starring roles in forgettable borefests such as RV and stand out smaller roles in films like A Night at the Museum. A reunion with Levinson on Man of the Year was weak and failed to live up to its satirical potential. Nevertheless, there was one badly marketed feature that probably deserved more attention. The World’s Greatest Dad is a black comedy in which he plays a man who covers up his son’s freak accident death with a fake suicide note – an act that attracts media attention. An interesting dark comedy that feels very impulsive on a narrative level, initially Williams had agreed to simply take a smaller role due to his friendship with Goldthwait from the days of doing stand up together, but he loved the script so much that he decided to take on the lead. One of the many titles in Robin Williams’ filmography waiting to be re-discovered.