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Boulevard (2014 film)


dutchmuch
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  • 5 years later...

Summer 2021… just past the 7th Anniversary of RW’s death. His range was a once in a lifetime sort of talent. I found his later subtle work very compelling in general. One Hour Photo, so dark.

Boulevard recently showed up in a recommended list. I had read about it briefly when it was released after his death, but didn’t retain details.

The unrequited love of a hooker with a heart has been with us since the talkies, but I had hopes that casting a truly complex actor as the “John” would bring something special. The script was unhelpful.

I wish that Robin Williams could have been better. Better direction, or a few years earlier would have made a big difference. I loved the way he played the hesitant discomfort of the first moments alone with Leo. But I didn’t sense much of the companionship that would have been the glue for his marriage. 

It may have been a director overeager to reign in the zany taking all charm with it.

Perhaps Robin’s dementia was at work in how he chose to play scenes, I don’t know. Nolan seemed flatly humorless even in slightly lighter moments, one-dimensional in a way that I would not have expected from him. Almost as if the character’s isolation was too parallel to his own.

It’s also not impossible that inhabiting this role, a man over 60 who’s been masked his entire life and is forced to suddenly live without the safety of the mask (in Robin’s case his rapid fire brain) hit too close. Maybe the resonance of this last role may have been on his mind at the end.

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