By Rob Fagin
WONDERFUL SPARK OF MADNESS
Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam
Watching the right pair of movies backto-back can illuminate wildly different
details and create a whole new viewing experience. Here's your monthly guide:
There is a meme being passed around
with the joke about a deeply depressed
man getting a prescription from a doctor
to go see the great clown, Pagliacci, to
cheer his soul, which leads to the punchline: "But, Doctor, I am Pagliacci!" Of
course, this is posted sadly with a picture
of the now-tragic Robin Williams.
Dying at a relatively young age,
when you still presumably have the possibility of important work to offer, colors
an eerie watermark atop everything in
that person's truncated life that came
before. The luminous Lauren Bacall died
the day after Williams at the age of 89,
but the next time we see her teaching
Humphrey Bogart how to whistle, all we
will think is "Damn, that woman knows
how to whistle." The next time we see
Robin Williams in anything, his horribly
sad end will hover over our thoughts.
A Juilliard-trained actor, Williams
rose through the ranks of 70's stand-up
comedy with his manic, coked-out
stream of conscious rants to become a
major TV star in the role of, appropriately, an alien living on Earth in Mork &
Mindy. His first major film role was as
the live-action version of a cartoon character in Robert Altman's bizarre 1980
musical-comedy Popeye, before he went
on to the quirky drama of George Roy
Hill's The World According to Garp ('83)
and Paul Mazursky's under-seen gem
Moscow on the Hudson ('84), proving at
the very least that he could hold a movie
together.
In 1987, his career was elevated to a
completely new level when he took the
role of AFRS radio DJ Adrian Cronauer
in Barry Levinson's war comedy Good
Morning, Vietnam. Roger Ebert has a persuasive, 4-star review of this classic in
which he ponders: "In a strange, subtle
way, Good Morning, Vietnam is not so
much about war as it is about stand-up
comedy, about the need that compels
people to get up in front of the room and
try to make us laugh - to control us…
War wipes the grin off of his face. His
humor becomes a humanitarian tool."
The movie was both a critical and commercial success, garnering Williams a
Golden Globe award, and Oscar and
BAFTA nominations, and paving the
long stretch of road for his hugely profitable and prolific body of work.
Dead Poets Society ('89), Awakenings
('90) and The Fisher King ('91) were powerful examples of his starkly honest dramatic work. But it was his performances
in family movies that probably cemented
his personality into the American sub-
conscious: as a grown-up Peter Pan in
Hook ('91), the voice of a shape-shifting
genie in Aladdin ('92) and as a desperate
father dressing as an elderly nanny to
spend time with his kids in his most
commercially successful flick, Mrs.
Doubtfire ('93).
Despite his movie star status, he often
took small roles in movies like Dead
Again ('91) and Hamlet ('96) because he
was game, always game - he always
wanted to play, to have fun, to try something new. After winning an Oscar for
Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting in
1997, he went on to riskier projects, culminating in a particularly morbid collection of films in 2002: as a frighteningly
smart murderer in Insomnia, a coldly
obsessive clerk in One Hour Photo, and a
dangerously jealous children's entertainer in Death to Smoochy.
There was often a darkness that
Williams was unafraid to play with, even
as he became known as an actor who
was drawn to overly sentimental dreck
like Patch Adams. Yet, even in that
movie, he attempts suicide. In fact, two
of his most emotionally enduring works
deal overtly with suicide: Dead Poets
Society and What Dreams May Come ('98).
But right now, I want to remember him
for the two movies that made the most
impact on me when I was growing up.
First up:
Aladdin (90 min)
Dir. Ron Clements, John Musker, 1992
Availability: DVD/Blu-ray
The incredible animation combined
with the unmistakable voice of Williams'
Genie is the most exhilaratingly boundContinued on page 51
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16 illinoisentertainer.com september 2014