Best Supporting Actor 1997: Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting

Robin Williams won an Oscar from his fourth nomination for portraying Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting.

Robin Williams plays the psychotherapist who helps Good Will Hunting (Matt Damon) deal with his past, and attempt to help him forge his future. Maguire is a movie psychiatrist in all regards, revealing a bit too much to his patient and also getting a little unrealistically close to him too.

Upon reflection on Robin Williams's acting career, I think what you saw was a performer with tremendous talent, but the question was how one utilized, or in fact, regulated that talent. Williams has old standards and style of improvisation, which sometimes was ideal, like in the comic DJ character in Good Morning Vietnam, but other times it seemed the main character he was portraying took a backseat for Robin Williams the comedian to ply his trade for a scene or even for a moment. Williams's two best performances, in turn, stand as his work in One Hour Photo and Insomnia, not because they were against his comedic type, but rather because he was dialed into those characters the entire time. His performance in Good Will Hunting is his most famous dramatic turn, but in turn, I think it is a combination of the strengths of his work as a dramatic performer, while also being the elements that sometimes hold down hold back his dramatic acting. 

Re-watching the film I'll concede that I treated his performance as a monolith, a mistake I'll quickly admit to in my earlier reviews, as one bad scene doesn't make a performance bad, and to write off the entirety of a performance for one scene, isn't quite ideal. Although I'll revisit still the scenes that don't entirely work for me. One is in that Robin Williams the comedian moment, not actually the farting scene, where Sean describes his wife's habit of farting while being a Robin Williams improvisation, I think he does successfully fashion this moment through the character of Sean Maguire. He avoids fully going into Robin Williams Schtick, it is a moment fashioned to be funny but it comes from a more measured delivery for the most part, except for a brief moment where he replays a moment from the past. In that quick moment he becomes the comedian and is a little insincere whereas the rest of the bit, is a bit, but a bit that comes from Sean, not from Williams. The other moment like this is in part of Sean telling Will about when he first met his wife. In a scene that is mostly in character, however, the framing device of a Boston Red Sox game is delivered very much as Williams doing Robin Williams describing the game with that Williams's energy and less so again the psychiatrist Sean Maguire telling this part of the story. 

The other major negative that I'll mention, in what otherwise is a strong scene for Williams is the moment where he first meets Will, where he deals with Will's hostility through light self-deprecation and gentle openness until Will attacks Sean on his wife leading Sean to physically grip Will and say "I will end you". Although the rest of the scene is well performed, that moment feels like acted intensity by Robin Williams rather than genuine intensity with the delivery, in particular, feeling a bit much. Having said that the lead-up to that is well performed from the ease of projecting the sincere care in Sean for his potential patient to his slow exasperation when Will attacks the raw nerve of his deceased wife. All around that is good acting by Williams in revealing that trauma. There are definitely other strong moments in Williams's performance. The most noted being his park monologues about Will's lack of experience with life, and in that Williams is terrific in delivering the monologue with both an earnest inspiration and heartbroken trauma in Sean. He reveals the character's pain and his wisdom at that moment quite effectively. There are other good moments in which Williams articulates that note of the warmth of the character, with his strain, his encouragement, and his struggle. These moments are well-realized and Williams's playing into the inspirational Williams style in a way that works. Having said that I still don't love this performance, as, like Damon, I don't buy the Southie background within Williams's performance. He's supposed to be "one of the guys" and that rings hollow. Williams doesn't quite pull it off, he's not bad, but it's not quite there. We see this, particularly in his scenes with Stellan Skarsgard the math professor who discovers will. It is supposed to be the working-class sensibility against the snob in a sense. Williams though never is convincing in the working-class Boston manner leaving something amiss. Having said that he is good though still in portraying his passion in defending Will against the other man's prejudices, the dynamic isn't wholly realized. I'll admit looking back my feelings having changed much. I'll just grant I didn't give enough credit to what works here, and there are definitely elements that work quite well within Williams's performance. There elements that don't as well, but again not a monolith. There are genuine moments of poignancy that Williams delivers in crafting the wisdom of the character that should be regarded properly, even if I still must state my reservations in the "character breaking" moments, and the fact that I never quite believe Williams as a man born and raised in South Boston.