The director Tim Robbins idolised: “A great inspiration and a touchstone”
It’s been almost three decades since Tim Robbins last directed a feature, which seems strange when he’s proven himself to be every bit as good behind the camera as he is in front of it.
His sophomore feature, 1995’s Dead Man Walking, starred Sean Penn as a death row inmate and earned them respective Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Actor’, while Susan Sarandon claimed the ‘Best Actress’ trophy.
On either side of the acclaimed awards season favourite, Robbins helmed 1992’s satirical mockumentary Bob Roberts and the 1999 historical drama Cradle Will Rock, which marked the end of his directorial ventures. Maybe the latter’s spectacular bombing at the box office had something to do with it, but since then, he’s remained focused on his acting exploits.
The common threat that unites Robbins’ work as a director is that it focuses on human stories with strong social commentary, regardless of the genre. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that the filmmaker who inspired him the most had a similar passion for digging deep into characters and positioning them as emblematic of the time they lived in and how they were viewed by society.
They never got the chance to work together, but Robbins was a big enough fan that even meeting his directorial hero was a daunting experience. “Miloš Forman made some of the most beautiful films I have ever seen,” he told Eye for Film. “Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was a bit nervous when I had the chance to meet him. Sometimes when I meet people I idolise, I am worried, but most of the time they turn out to be great people.”
Fortunately, Forman was one of those great people. Robbins explained that what he admired most was that despite his success, “He retained his integrity and vision of what a filmmaker should be: it is difficult sometimes trying to maintain a career and say ‘no’, but he did that and said he would cross a line.”
Calling him a “great inspiration and a touchstone,” Robbins reserved special praise for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one of only three films to win the ‘Big Five’ at the Oscars. “Miloš somehow captured the spirit and the tenor of what was happening in our country at the time,” he said. “It is a beautiful script and a great story.”
Forman was certainly not afraid to make art that stood in criticism of certain societal structures. His 1967 film The Firemen’s Ball is a sharp satire that reflected the growing frustration with life in Eastern Europe under communism. The film was initially distributed in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring but was later banned by the Communist government. As a result, he was forced to leave his home country and move to the United States.
The poignant and creative explorations of human nature and the brave rejection of creative and societal boundaries in Forman’s films truly make him one of the greats. Looking at his own work as a director, it’s no surprise that Robbins took huge inspiration from the Oscar-winning auteur.
