A story about stories as Robin Williams portraits different characters throughout the history of human kind.
This movie is delightful and inspirational in its unpretentious approach while telling short stories with a very calm pace. This movie is a must watch for the body of work on Robin Williams and to see his marvelous talent in action. Also the stories are so well crafted that even in the absence of a grand story arc each plot is interesting and insightful into the state of human kind in the particular historic era. One recurring theme in the movie are humans and men (in the role of Robin Williams) in their helpless relationship with overwhelming powers like love, money, faith and ego while being driven into decisions as „slaves“ to the grander scheme of things. The movie starts and ends at the sea and uses the shore often throughout the plots. I imagine it could be interpreted as humankind at the shore of the vast „ocean“ of time living one’s personal stories resigned to one’s fate. The story of humans as a recurring and an „insignificant“ theme in front of the backdrop of cosmological time as waves collapsing on a beach grind sand. The question of being human is answered with „being human“ with a pinch of hope…
Being Human (1994 film)
Being Human is a 1994 comedy-drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Robin Williams, John Turturro, Bill Nighy, Vincent D'Onofrio, Robert Carlyle, Theresa Russell and Ewan McGregor in his feature-film debut. An international co-production of the United Kingdom and Japan, the film portrays the experience of a single human soul, portrayed by Williams, through various incarnations. Williams is the only common actor throughout the stories that span man's history on Earth.
An attempt on director-screenwriter Bill Forsyth's part to depict by visual means the ordinariness of life throughout the ages, Being Human is deliberately slow in its pace to emphasize how slow life often is. The structure is one of vignette-like character studies of one man (actually five distinct men, all with the same soul) who keeps making the same relationships and mistakes throughout his lifetimes.
Definition from Wikipedia – Being Human (1994 film)
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedies alike, he is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. He received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, five Grammy Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005.
Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s, and released several comedy albums including Reality ... What a Concept in 1980. He rose to fame playing the alien Mork in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982). He received his first leading film role in Popeye (1980). Williams won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting (1997). His other Oscar-nominated roles were for Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989) and The Fisher King (1991).
Williams starred in the critically acclaimed dramas The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990)...
Definition from Wikipedia – Robin Williams