Media & Entertainment 1,735 views

Robin Williams: Our Funniest Comic Was One Of Our Best Actors

Comment Now Follow Comments



Once again I find myself writing something of an obituary and am disappointed in myself for not finding the time to say what I had to say while the person was still alive to appreciate it, even if the chance they would have read it was slim. As all you know, Robin Williams died yesterday afternoon at the age of 63 apparently by his own hand. There will be many tributes and testimonials, much of it justifiably surrounding his towering legacy as a stand-up comedian, a comic actor, and a human being. But for the moment I’d like to concentrate on a somewhat unsung portion of his career. While his contribution to stand-up comedy is paramount, on the same small pedestal alongside Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor, I have long believed that his best work in films was not his comic work or his comedies but rather his dramatic performances. By virtue of his comic works and his reputation as one of the funniest men on the planet, he remained one of the most underrated dramatic actors of his generation.

I’m not so much saying that Mr. Williams didn’t get accolades and awards for his non-comedic performances. He has won raves and Oscar nominations for films like Good Morning, Vietnam (basically a “chaos of war” drama with interludes of Mr. Williams doing his shtick), Dead Poet’s Society, The Fisher King, and Good Will Hunting. He even won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the latter back in 1998, and we all knew he was going to win as soon as the iconic “just because you’ve read Oliver Twist” scene concluded. But each time Robin Williams took a serious role or made a “ serious” movie, it was viewed as a comedic actor taking an against-type role or attempting to change his onscreen image. It was always viewed as “the funny guy taking a serious role.” There are worse problems to have then being so esteemed in one area of performance art that you are vastly underrated in another. But his greatest contribution to cinema remains his stunningly powerful work in a whole host of so-called “serious pictures.”
When I remember Mr. Williams, at least as a film actor, I am most likely to go to his achingly sad work in Penny Marshall’s superb encephalitis lethargica drama Awakenings. I am likely to remember his quietly devastating work in the sadly underrated What Dreams May Come, which hid a low-key fable of unbearable loss and the challenges of family communication inside a special effects extravaganza. I will remember his low-key villain turns in Insomnia and One Hour Photo, the latter of which contains one of his best performances in a sadly compromised final product. I’ll even defend Being Human, a famously panned centuries-spanning drama that fell on its face but is exactly the kind of ‘aim for the stars, land in the trash” passion project that should be appreciated if not occasionally celebrated. It’s not “good,” but it has stuck with me for twenty years and what I would give for more failures of its ilk in our multiplexes.
A slight digression, but I will remember the mostly slight Mrs. Doubtfire not for its farcical cross-dressing comedy but for its bittersweet ending which refused to get its divorced couple back together yet served as a reassuring hug to an entire generation of “children-of-divorce” kids. Broadly comic as it was overall, I will always remember Williams in The Birdcage as one of the first times I saw major studio film with a major gay character who wasn’t a walking stereotype. I will remember his serious films that didn’t quite work, such as Bicentennial Man and Jacob the Liar, and even Steven Spielberg’s fantastical Hook, where Williams played Peter Pan as Spielberg wrestling with how to be a globe-trotting filmmaker and a participatory parent. His most recent film, The Angriest Man in Brooklyn doesn’t quite work either, but there is a rawness to its anger and depression over a wasted life, one that now has perhaps a new potency in light of the apparent depression that took the actor’s life.

I have a few favorite Robin Williams comedies too, such as Aladdin and World’s Greatest Dad (his last great film and my pick for his best comedy), and his 2012 guest-spot on Louie is a thing of beauty. But the impression he made in films like Good Will Hunting and What Dreams May Come have lingered with me longer than the likes of RV, Toys, or Man of the Year or even his more popular comedies such as Patch Adams or Nine Months. To the extent that it matters, and you are free to argue especially after-the-fact that it does not, Robin Williams gave any number of fantastic dramatic performances and made any number of superb dramas, compiling a list that would have been the envy of any of our best-and-brightest film actors even absent his comedies. As surely as he was a comic genius, he was also a (Julliard-trained) master thespian who arguably never got his due as an actor by virtue of the blinding light of his comedic talents.
Even if Mr. Williams had never bothered to make us laugh, and we should be forever grateful that he did, his powerful and achingly human performances in films like What Dreams May Come, Good Will Hunting, One Hour Photo would have likely cemented his legacy as a superb actor. That a performance as good as his career-peak turn as a newly widowed father in the “Bop Gun” episode of Homicide: Life on the Street serves as a mere footnote to his overall legacy says more about his comic impact than anything else. There will be plenty of writers who will justifiably celebrate the times he made us laugh. I wanted to take a moment to recognize the times he made us cry. I had been meaning to write this for years but never got around to it. I’m sorry it took his passing to motivate me to do so.
If you like what you’re reading, follow me on Forbes, follow @ScottMendelson on Twitter, and “like” The Ticket Booth on Facebook. Also, check out my archives for older work.