Saturday 10 April 2010

Best Actor 1989: Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society

Robin Williams received his second nomination of four (so far) for playing John Keating an inspirational English Teacher in the Dead Poet's Society.

The Dead Poet's society is not a very original movie in any regard. It enjoyable I suppose in its standard way though. In Williams plays the standard role of the inspirational teacher who teaches his students to be individuals rather than conformists. Williams actually is hardly the focus of the movie and is really just a supporting player to the main students.

Williams performance here is not anything that special. He plays the inspirational teacher as you would expect, he would. He gives the dramatic and inspirational speeches well enough, but his character itself lacks very much depth. He just is just the teacher nothing more, why does he force the students to call him Captain, My Captain, because he loves Poetry I guess, why does he act the way he does precisely, you never truly find out from William's performance.I wish there was more to his performance but instead we get very little. He is okay in a mostly restrained performance, but one thing brought this performance down for me. That was one scene where he completely breaks character and does Robin Williams' comedy routine.


7 comments:

joe burns said...

Haven't seen this, but I know it's a film that people have a lot of mixed feelings on.

Tom said...

This is probably my favorite movie with Robin Williams in it. Usually I don't care for him and his act, but in this one, he's exceptional.

Malcolm said...

I like the film, don't really love it, made me cry, but Williams is quite underwhelming and leans toward supporting, don't you think?

Louis Morgan said...

Yes, Definitely.

joe burns said...

Whose profile is next?

Louis Morgan said...

Freeman.

Anonymous said...

Robin Williams is supporting in Dead Poet Society and Martin Landau is lead in Crimes and Misdemeanours. They should have swapped categories.