India Today – August 13, 2018

DOCUMENTARY

Laughter, Highs & Lows

y first impression of (Robin
Williams) on stage was that
he could fly, because of the
energy. It was like observing
an experiment,” says comedian and TV
show host David Letterman, speaking
of the late 1970s in the documentary,
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind.
“All I could do was to hang on to the
mike for dear life, and here was a guy
who could levitate. We knew whatever
Robin was doing, we weren’t going to
get close to that.”
After Williams’s suicide in 2014, it
emerged that he had been suffering from
dementia. A glut of reports
milked the tragedy-
behind-comedy tagline.
Turns out they weren’t off
the mark. The HBO biopic
shows a Williams we never
saw before. A lonely pri-
vate school student—yes,
exactly like the one in
Dead Poets Society—who
had to constantly find
ways to amuse himself. A desperate need
for communication underlay his relent-
less drive for comic improvisation. “He
was always looking for a connection,”
says ex-wife Valerie Velardi. “If he had to
pull out another persona or an accent, he
was shameless about it.” Drawing from

exhaustive footage, the film has Williams

describing his method: “I don’t tell jokes,

I just use characters as a vehicle for me. I

seldom talk as myself.”

Enthralling as Williams was on stage,

it was exasperating to keep up with his

hyper-improv style. He was the first

stand-up comic to shift to television and

then to Hollywood, a superstar three

times-over. When he started in the TV

show Mork & Mindy in 1978, sitcoms

were shot with three cameras. But the

high-speed antics of the king of improv

were too fast to capture on three camer-

as that were used to shoot sitcoms at the

time. The producers had

to deploy a fourth, mov-

ing camera, which then

became the norm. It still is,

an example of his impact

on the entertainment

world. Jim Carrey, perhaps

the only viable comparison

in improv, grew up imi-

tating Williams’s breath-

arresting delivery.

Halfway through, the film turns poig-

nant. We see the high-voltage stage per-

former’s off-stage vulnerability, his lack

of self-worth, his neediness for an audi-

ence... and then the suicide. A gripping

insight into an extraordinary mind. n

—Sopan Joshi

HUM-I AM

BECAUSE OF US

Starring Kushal Tandon,

Karishma Sharma, Ridhima

Pandit and Payal Bhojwani,

this is a regular TV soap

made for the web—with

sisters falling for the same

hunk as the hook.

Alt-Balaji

He may be ‘just another immi-

grant’ to white Americans, but

those schooled in the ways of

ABCDs will recognise come-

dian Romesh Ranganathan as

something very different in

this US docuseries—

a Sri Lankan-Brit uprooted to

Trump’s America.

Hotstar

FULL TIGHT

SonyLIV’s second Marathi-

language show, this seven-

episode original youth dramedy

revolves around Adi’s (Akshay

Kelkar) unusual relation-

ship with his parents (Yatin

Karyekar and Sneha Raikar).

SonyLIV

WATCHLIST

The film

captures the

high-voltage

performer’s

vulnerability

M

ROBIN WILLIAMS:

COME INSIDE

MY MIND

Directed by Marina

Zenovich

Length: 111 minutes

Production: HBO

Streaming on:

Hotstar Premium