My Favorite Memories of Robin Williams

A brief look back on his film moments that have stayed with me the strongest over time.

image copyright TriStar pictures

He was an incredibly funny man.  His brain seemed to work at a thousand times normal speed, churning out more zany improvisations and jokes in five minutes than many successful comedians produce in a year.  My earliest encounters with his work were in the family movies he acted in or did voice work for, FernGully and Hook and of course Aladdin.

But the roles he played that have had the strongest impact on my memory were always surprisingly understated and heartfelt, and were uplifting not through wacky antics but through using his incredible power of living in his character's mind and body, becoming that character for the time they had on screen.  He was a very funny man, but he could nail tenderness, he could nail depth of feeling, he could nail pathos and subtle wit.

In an odd way, I feel what makes his passing especially egregious is that he'd be the perfect person to cheer us up about it ,if he were here.  Since he's not, and since I know he'll always be able to make me laugh, I'm here remembering the parts of him I seem to carry with me, because he worked hard enough to put them there.

What Dreams May Come (1998)

"What's true in our minds is true, whether some people know it or not."

image courtesy of imdb.com

This one I may not re-watch in the immediate future, though I probably should.

It's mostly a visual show, big sets and insane (for the time) computer effects and subtle tricks of wires and lighting.  But what matters is the journey, what Chris Neilson is willing to do to be together with the woman he loves.  And if the actor portraying him hadn't been able to make us feel the way he felt about her, and about their lives together, it wouldn't have been a journey worth taking.

Good Will Hunting (1997)

"People call those imperfections, but no, that's the good stuff."

image courtesy of imdb.com

He didn't write the many excellent, excellent lines he gets to deliver in this movie, but boy he makes you believe he's the one thinking of them when he says them.  It's a tough movie, the kid has genuine troubles that his half-flip half-flinty counselor Sean knows how to get through but not immediately how to approach.  It's not an easy role to get right, and, as in the above example, if he hadn't been able to hit just the right pitch of charmingly disinterested interest, the movie wouldn't be half as meaningful.

Awakenings (1990)

"What we do know is that, as the chemical window closed, another awakening took place; that the human spirit is more powerful than any drug - and that is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter. This is what we'd forgotten - the simplest things."

image copyright Columbia Pictures

This is probably the role that surprised me most when I first saw him in it, and I believe it may have been the first dramatic role I saw him in as well. Compared to the Robin Williams Robin Williams we think of when we think of Mrs. Doubtfire, the difference couldn't be more stark.

Dr. Malcom Sayer is very quiet. He likes plants, he collects molds and funguses in his home, in many ways he understands chemical-organic processes better than he understands people. But he's also, at first, the only doctor willing to look at a group of comatose patients in the Bronx psychiatric hospital that fall under his care, and see through to the people trapped inside, and try to find a way to bring them out. Inspired by a true story, directed by Penny Marshall. An excellent performance, highly recommended if you haven't seen it.

Bicentennial Man (1999)

"I try to make sense of things. Which is why, I guess, I believe in destiny. There must be a reason that I am as I am. There must be."

image copyright Touchstone Pictures, Columbia Pictures

My personal favorite Robin Williams movie is not the best movie I've ever seen, and it's actually not his best work. It's not even the best movie on this list, (although it's a good deal better than many may remember it being; it was criminally mis-marketed on its release as another wacky Robin Williams flick with little else going for it but humor). But there's something about it that stayed in my brain when I saw it the first time and hasn't come out yet. It's an utterly simple movie; a robot undergoes a decades-long process to change from metal plates and circuits to flesh and blood, to become human.

What matters are the two reasons he does it: to be the best he can, and to love his family. It is a very human movie, it's got a host of wonderful little moments, and for all its faults, I think it was probably this movie that made me realize what a talent for bringing feeling to his work the man had.

The Fisher King (1991)

"And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

image courtesy of imdb.com

Getting a little closer to what we think of when we think of Robin Williams, or at least so it seems at first glance.  Parry isn't the main character of the story, and he's definitely not your average New York City bum; he believes he's on a holy quest to retrieve the holy grail, no less, and he needs Jack, the disenchanted radio jockey, to help him.  He is visited by invisible spirits, he spouts constant and colorful advice about the way to lead a good life, he strips in Central Park and howls at the moon.

He's also burying a lot of hurt, a lot of loss, deep inside that only slowly, carefully, and absolutely genuinely comes forward, as Jack tries to coax him back to life and undo the wrongs that were done to him.  Quite possibly Terry Gilliam's sanest picture, whatever that means, although it's sometimes intense and hard to watch, it's worth buying a copy. If you already own it, watch it again soon, you can tell he put his all into it.

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

"But if there's love, dear... those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever. All my love to you, poppet, you're going to be all right... bye-bye."

image copyright 20th Century Fox

God, this movie. It ought to be such a mess. It seems like the kind of thing that might come out nowadays, something that should have stayed in the studio's executive board room.  "What if a guy..." and so forth.  It shouldn't work.  But it does work, and it's actually good.

Roger Ebert approved of it, barely, and comparing it unfavorably with Tootsie wrote, "[Dustin] Hoffman as an actor was able to successfully play a woman. Williams, who is also a good actor, seems more to be playing himself playing a woman." The funny thing is, I thinks this comparison helps bring to light exactly what makes this insane what-if movie, which shouldn't be much better than a TV show pilot, worth watching more than twenty years after its release. The key to the role here isn't that there's a guy dressing up like a woman, but who the guy is underneath, and why he's dressing up in the first place.

We are asked to believe that the out-of-work comedic actor Daniel cares about his kids so much that he's wiling to put himself through, well, by now I'm sure you know, in order to see them. What makes it work is that we believe he really cares about them, and that he's doing all these ludicrous, hilarious things not for their own sake, but, somehow, for the sake of his kids. That is a huge somehow, and there's no one who could have made it fly like the guy who did.  What makes the movie work, as with all these movies really, is the incredible amount of heart Williams brings to the role, which is something you can't fake, and something which in movies these days you can watch a long time without seeing.

image courtesy of imdb.com

Celebrity tragedies are always sad, but to me they generally seem impersonal, since I didn't know the person. But I am filled with personal, genuine heartache to hear about this loss, as I can't count the number of times this man brought happiness into my life, and my family's lives. The world has lost a great source of joy and an inestimable talent. Rest in peace Robin Williams, you will be sorely missed.