Skip to main content

Robin Williams : An Obituary


Robin Williams died on 17th August, 2014. It was a suicide, apparently. An actor primarily known for his comic abilities died a tragic death. Depression caused it, some assessed. No one disagreed but for the people who saw him on celluloid only. His fraternity, the people from Hollywood, moaned incessantly and this time, everyone agreed. It was a massive loss. Those who were close to him always knew that Robin was having a deadly feud with the demon known as depression. He succumbed to it, however, is something people will always rue over in times to come for he resembled the bravest in this mortal world. Robin was a genius, one of a kind and no other actor of his generation had the ability to transform himself/herself so effortlessly like him between camera takes.

I saw many obituaries of Robin in the days to follow and noticed one startling fact which was hard to stomach. I would call it a faux pas determinately. They all labeled Robin as a great comedian….even Obama couldn’t agree anymore with these analysts. However, it wasn’t a truth and at least I am the one averse to it. No doubt he was unsurpassed by few when it came to delivering comic punch-lines but there was always something more to him than that. Apart from various Oscar nominations and awards which he received in his glitteringly illustrious career (winning an Oscars is an important criteria to judge greatness, though it often overlooks the likes of Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Peter O’Toole among many), he also had a great flare for dramatic affairs. ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ was one such brilliant performance followed by more excellent outings in ‘Dead Poets’ Society’, ‘Awakening’, ‘Good Will Hunting’, ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ and ‘Insomnia’. In the latter most, he even bettered Al Pacino, the very paragon of acting excellence, what’s to say more. Similarly, ‘The Fisher King’ was an underappreciated movie but Robin’s performance was otherworldly in it.

‘Carpe Diem’, a Latin Phrase was popular in America among social scientists, educationists and whatnots before the times of Robin but it became a jargon after Robin uttered them in an atypical way in ‘Dead Poets’ Society’. ‘Seize the day’ it means in English and Robin did exactly that till the day he breathed his last.
Adios, my friend !!!!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Racing Extinction (2015) : A Commentary

It's really hard to switch on to a different language from the one you have constantly been tinkering with. I grew so accustomed to writing in Hindi in last few days that it started dawning on me that I might never be good again with my English. So this is a tester, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, one of my movie group friends, an American by nationality, questioned my fondness of documentaries. I specifically wrote in one of my columns that documentaries demand your unwavering attention and once you gave 'that' to them, you are rewarded much more handsomely than a proper, narrative, fictitious film. My reasoning for believing so is that a documentary is an experience of a creative process. It doesn't get made to 'entertain' you. They are there to reveal something to you. They teach you something. You get overwhelmed by them. 'Racing Extinction (2015)' was one such documentary. I watched it in last couple of days. I couldn't complete it in one ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Love and Friendship

Friendship is an aspect of life that’s not controlled by its beholders. Ideal friendships, well they are the things of past now. Many a times we have seen our parents or their parents talking about their old great friends and how amusingly they tell us about their bonding, the moments they spent together and we see a ‘priceless’ twinkle in their eyes…..that’s something which is missing from modern friendships. There are terms & phrases like ‘yaar tu to apna bhai hai’, ‘yaar tu to ghar ka aadmi hai’ which even today invoke something very beautiful inside our hearts but we all know that the feelings underneath them are ‘hollow’, they are just mere words, ‘emotionless’ and ‘impassive’. Well who am I to comment on such an indefinable ‘qualitative’ perspective? I’m one of you, those wretched creatures that are still in need of true, great friendships. Well I certainly can’t say that I haven’t got friends. I’ve got friends, plenty of them in fact, and some of them are real great. I s...
1 comment
Read more

Book Review: Unanswered

'Unanswered' is a book penned by Mr. Kunal Uniyal and it's his third book. I am calling it a book, using a common noun to describe it and I have a good enough reason for doing so. It's a book that consists off both poems and prose and I was in real dilemma picturing its prognosis in my mind. It started with a poem named 'You and I' and beautiful it was, all poised and lyrical. And then came a snippet of a prose by the name 'Life of a Yogi'. They were really not connected and I was perplexed. Then I allowed myself some comfort and decided to dig up some more. Some more beautiful poems and accompanying yet again not quite related passages of prose followed but now they looked more in shape and very much in order. Now I was beginning to realize that there was more to this book than met my eyes earlier and it's scope is much wider that what I originally thought. You are required to engage yourself with this book and once you do that, you will know you ar...
Post a Comment
Read more