Williams is, of course, famous for being a funnyman and he most certainly was one funny man. With his manic voices and impressions erupting out of him one on top of the other like a Roman candle of silliness, Robin Williams was less a comedian than an indefatigable comedic force of nature. My first exposure to Williams as a child was, as I suspect it was for many, on his television series ‘Mork and Mindy”, which stood as his signature role for a large portion of his career. Mork was the best possible introduction to Williams’ lunatic charms, a role that allowed him to careen off the walls with his trademark brand of revved-up insanity.
After ‘Mork and Mindy’ ended in 1982, Williams set his sights on the big screen and in 1987, he scored an Academy Award nomination for his role as an irreverent DJ entertaining the armed forces during the Vietnam War in ‘Good Morning Vietnam’. Two years later, Williams received his second Oscar nom as an inspirational English teacher in 1989’s ‘Dead Poets Society’. He was nominated for Best Actor three times in his career before finally winning Best Supporting Actor in 1998 for ‘Good Will Hunting’.
This is what was unique about Robin Williams. While many comedic actors take a stab at dramatic roles with varying degrees of success, Williams had a full-fledged career as a dramatic actor running parallel alongside his comedy roles. He didn’t dabble in drama, he excelled at it, turning in a number of soul-rending performances by tapping into the rich vein of innate sadness and vulnerability that seemed to exist just beneath his goofball exterior. So deft was Williams at straddling the line between comedy and tragedy that he could even juggle them both within the same film, as he did in 1991’s ‘The Fisher King’, simultaneously one of his funniest and most heartbreaking parts.
Williams tended to often go big and broad with his comedy, resulting in his explosively funny voice work as the Genie in 1992’s ‘Aladdin’ as well as making the sitcommy antics of 1994’s ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ much more hilarious than they otherwise had any right to be. But Williams also knew how to dial it down, as in his role as a gay nightclub owner in ‘The Birdcage’ where he allows Nathan Lane to pole-vault over the top while he was equally hilarious finding the quieter, more understated humor in his own character.
Williams could even be frightening if called upon to do so. In 2002, he appeared as a taunting psychotic in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Insomnia’ as well as a creepily fixated photo developer in ‘One Hour Photo’ and was the unsettling high point of each film.
Though Williams worked ceaselessly over the last decade, he never quite hit the same soaring high notes that he did in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And yet whenever Williams showed up in anything, be it an underwhelming comedy or a Snickers commercial, it was never unwelcome. No one with a soul ever groaned when being suddenly presented with Robin Williams. If anything, we took him for granted, allowing our deep familiarity with him to dilute our appreciation for his boundless talent and charms. And now he’s gone, somehow. Still doesn’t seem real.
- Brandon Wolfe
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