Robin Williams had one of the quickest minds in show business, but in the end, he was barely able to think. Two months after his suicide on August 11, 2014, a coroner’s report diagnosed him with Lewy body dementia, a debilitating neurological condition for which there is no cure.
The new documentary Robin’s Wish, streaming on Netflix, examines how the condition played out in the last years of Williams’ life. Much of director Tylor Norwood’s film is focused on the recollections of his widow, Susan Schneider Williams. Also heard are medical experts on Lewis body and various friends and admirers including fellow comedians Bobcat Goldwait and Mort Sahl.
Williams introduced his brand of zany as the extraterrestrial in the ‘70s sitcom “Mork and Mindy” and went on to a prolific career with misses as well as hits. He will always be remembered as a comedian with a manic grin, but—maybe this is a minority view—some of his best performances were as melancholy characters is lesser-known films such as One Hour Photo (2002) and The Night Listener (2006). Film historian David Thomson suggested as much when he wrote that Williams’ comedic persona was “couched in anxiety.” The observation gave credence to the widely publicized report that his suicide resulted from depression.
Robin’s Wish points to a chronic failing of the news media—the willingness to fill a vacuum of information with false assumptions and unwarranted assertions. There were reports of financial difficulties, bipolar syndrome, a relapse into drug and alcohol problems. According to Schneider Williams, no one suspected the truth, not even Robin Williams.
Colleagues from his final projects—Night in the Museum 3 and “The Crazy One”—recall that Williams wasn’t quite himself in the last two years before his death. He forgot lines or failed to ad-lib them. His usual frenetic mental agility slowed. Lewy body’s most obvious early symptom is trembling, and Williams was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s, but this could not explain the cognitive confusion and hallucinations he began to experience.
Sadly, even if he had been accurately diagnosed, there was nothing anything Williams or even the best neuro-specialists could have done. Lewy body dementia is progressively debilitating and inevitably fatal.
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